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A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s4: 4. The Prākrits

A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s4

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4. The Prākrits

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The most widely accepted etymology of Prākrit current in India treats the name as denoting derivative, the prime source (*prakṛti*) being Sanskrit. Another view reverses the position; Prākrit is what comes at once from nature, what all people without special instruction can easily understand and use.² It is impossible to decide what was the process which led to the use of the term; perhaps speeches other than Sanskrit received the name from being the cominon or vulgar speech, the language of the humble man as opposed to him of education who could talk the pure language. In the grammarians and writers on poetics the term more especially denotes a number of distinctly artificial literary dialects, which as they stand were certainly not vernaculars; but it is customary to use the term to apply to Indian vernaculars prior to the period when the modern vernaculars became fixed. An even wider sense is given by Sir George Grierson, who classifies Prākrits in three great stages:

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² Pischel, *Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen* (1900), §§ 1, 16.

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Primary Prākrits, of which the Vedic language and its successor Sanskrit are literary forms; Secondary Prākrits, represented in literature by Pāli, by the Prākrits of the grammarians, of the drama and literature generally, and by the Apabhraṁças of the grammarians; and Tertiary Prākrits, the modern vernaculars. It may be doubted whether the terminology has sufficient merit to render it desirable to give it currency, because it obscures the constant process of change and suggests that there are greater distinctions between the periods than do exist, while it does not allow a special place to a fundamental innovation which occurs with the period designed as Secondary Prākrit.

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Apart from conclusions drawn from odd forms in the Vedic literature, our first real knowledge of the Prākrits is derived from the inscriptions of Açoka,¹ from which can be deduced with certainty the existence of three dialects,² that of the east, used in the capital and intended to be the lingua franca of the Empire, that of the north-west, and that of the west. Of these the north-west preserves the most ancient aspect, for it retains the *r* element of the *r̥* vowel and *r* in consonantal groups, while the western dialect has *a* for *r̥* and assimilates, as in *mago* for *mr̥gas*, *a(t)tha* for *artha*, and the eastern dialect has *i* or *u* for *r̥* as well as *a*, and assimilates with cerebralization, as in *a(ṭ)ṭha* for *artha*, *va(ḍ)ḍhita* for *vardhita*, while in *kaṭa* or *kiṭa* for *kr̥ta* it shows cerebralization, suggesting an eastern origin for Sanskrit words with unusual cerebralization. The north-west dialect again preserves all three sibilants, though with departures from the norm due to assimilation, as in *çaçana* for *çāsana*, or dissimilation, as in *suçruṣa* for *çuçrūṣā*; the eastern has *s* and so also the western, but in this case there are traces that the distinction longer prevailed, since *rç* in such a word as *darçana* seems to have been transformed to *darṣana*, in which condition it cerebralized the *n*, before assimilating *rṣ* to *ss*.³ The authors of the Bhaṭṭiprōḷu inscriptions in South-east India, seemingly colonists from the west, had a sound intermediate between *ç* and *ṣ* indicating the manner of the change. The north-west and the west again agree against the east in assimilating *ty* to *cc* and *kṣ* to *cch*, against the representation of *ty* as *tiy* and the assimilation to *kkh*; the east again is marked by the use of *e* for primitive *az* as against *o*, and by its rejection of *r* in favour of *l*. This eastern dialect may fairly be regarded as a forerunner of the Ardhamāgadhī of the grammatical tradition, though that language has been largely affected by western influences in its later form. An inscription in a cave on the Rāmgarh hill, probably of the second century B. C., reveals to us the precursor of the later Māgadhī, since it shows its characteristics, *e* for *o*, *l* for *r*, *kkh* for *kṣ*, and *ç* for *s*.

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¹ New ed. E. Hultzsch (1925); on dialects see Chaps. VI–XI.

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² Michelson, AJP. xxx. 284 ff., 416 ff.; xxxi. 55 ff.; JAOS. xxx. 77 ff.; xxxi. 233 ff.; xxxvi. 210 f.

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³ Michelson, JAOS. xxxi. 236 f.; Lüders, SBA. 1912, pp. 806 ff.; 1914, p. 843.

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Our next information of a definite character regarding the dialects is afforded not so much by the various inscriptions of the post-Açokan period as by the dramas of Açvaghoṣa, which may be regarded as good testimony for the period *c.* A. D. 100. Here we find dialects which may justly be styled Old Ardhamāgadhī, Old Çaurasenī, and Old Māgadhī; of these the former may well have been the dialect in which, as tradition asserts, Mahāvīra preached his doctrines and established Jainism, and in which Buddhist teachers carried on their work.¹ The early Jain scriptures, however, have admittedly perished, and the actual canon of the Çvetāmbaras now extant is redacted in a form strongly influenced by the later south-western speech Māhārāṣṭrī, while later texts are written in what has been fairly called Jain Māhārāṣṭrī, and the Digambaras adopted under western influence what has been styled Jain Çaurasenī. The canonical language of Buddhism, on the other hand, is more ancient; it is not, however, Ardhamāgadhī, but is distinctly of a western type, perhaps more closely connected with Avantī or Kauçāmbī than any other region. To the group of old Prākrits belongs also the mysterious Paiçācī, in which the famous *Bṛhatkathā* of Guṇāḍhya was written; its home is still uncertain; it has been connected by Sir G. Grierson² with the north-western dialect of the Açokan inscriptions on the one side and the modern languages of the north-west, which with dubious accuracy he has styled Piçāca; against this may be set, *inter alia*, the fact that the north-western dialect of Açokan times kept the three sibilants which Paiçācī reduces to one, although the Gipsy dialect and the dialects of the Hindu Kush distinguish still between *s* and *ṣ* on the one hand and *ç* on the other.¹ The possession by Paiçācī of the letters *ḷ* and *l*, and the use of one nasal *n* only, have been adduced by Konow² as proof of location in addition to its close connexion with Pāli, and, as these features were preserved in modern Mālvī, and its hardening of soft consonants is probably due to Dravidian influence, Paiçācī has been located in accord with Indian tradition in the Vindhya region. Inscriptions suggest also that south of the Narmadā there was a measure of independent development, adding a south-western to the three great groups already known; thus in the south we have *duḥutuya*, *dhūā* in the later Māhārāṣṭrī, pointing to the source of Ardhamāgadhī *dhūyā*, as opposed to the *dhitā* of the northern inscriptions, Pāli *dhītā*, Çaurasenī (beside *duhidā*) and Māgadhī *dhīdā*, Vedic *dhitā* beside the normal *duhitā*.³

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¹ Cf. Keith, IHQ. i. 501 ff.

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² *Piśāca Lang.*, pp. 1 ff.; ZDMG. lxvi. 49 ff.; JRAS. 1921, pp. 424 ff.; IA. xlix. 114; AMJV. i. 119 ff.

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¹ Reichelt, *Festschrift Streitberg*, p. 245.

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² ZDMG. lxiv. 95; JRAS. 1921, pp. 244 ff.; cf. Ranganathaswami Aryavaraguru, IA. xlviii. 211 f. Przyluski (*La légende de l'empereur Açoka*, p. 72) holds that Pāli may have had relations with Kauçāmbī.

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³ Lüders, KZ. xlix. 233 f.

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The characteristics of these Old Prākrits are simple.⁴ They include the loss of the vowels *ṛ* and *ḷ*, and of the diphthongs *ai* and *au*; reduction in the number of sibilants and nasals; and the assimilation of consonants. They show also the operation of the substitution of the expiratory for the musical accent, a feature which is obvious in Sanskrit during the same period. Further, they are subject to a most important law which reduces each syllable to the form either of a vowel, short or long, a short vowel followed by one or two consonants, or a long vowel followed by a single consonant; the resulting changes of form are intensified by the confusion which results from substituting a long vowel with a single consonant for an originally short vowel with two consonants, or the use of a nasal vowel in lieu of a long vowel, or a short vowel and a consonant, when another consonant follows.

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⁴ Lüders, *Bruchstücke buddh. Dramen*, pp. 29 ff.; Keith, *Sanskrit Drama*, pp. 72 ff. 85 ff., 121 ff. Contrast Michelson, AJP. xli. 265 ff.; Bloch, JA. 1911, ii. 167. In a Prākrit of the Western Panjāb is composed the *Dhammapada* of the Dutreuil de Rhins MS.; Konow, *Festschrift Windisch*, pp. 85 ff. (1st cent. A. D.); Lüders, SBA 1914, pp. 101 ff. (3rd cent. A. D.).

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It is probable enough that literature of a secular character was composed in these Old Prākrits until the second century A. D., but about that date we have clear evidence of the fundamental changes which mark what may be called the Middle Prākrit of the grammarians and of most of the extant literature. This consists in the softening or disappearance of intervocalic consonants, carried to the furthest in Māhārāṣṭrī in the dominions of the Çātavāhanas of the south-west, but noteworthy also in the other Prākrits recognized by the grammarians, Māgadhī, and Çaurasenī. We see in the dramas of Bhāsa, as compared with those of Açvaghoṣa on the one hand and of Kālidāsa on the other, clear evidence of transition, the omission of intervocalic consonants, the softening of surds to sonants, the reduction of aspirates to *h*, the change of *y* into *j*, the substitution of *ṇ* for *n*, the simplification of double consonants with compensatory lengthening. The evidence of inscriptions supports the view which assigns the loss of intervocalic consonants to the second century A. D.,¹ in which century Māhārāṣṭrī lyric began its successful career, made known to us in the anthology of Hāla. Once stereotyped by the grammarians at an uncertain date, the Prākrits rapidly lost in importance as they became more and more divorced from current speech, while they did not possess the traditional sanctity of Sanskrit or its clarity of structure and beauty of form.

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¹ Bloch, *Mélanges Lévi*, pp. 12 ff. (*kamāra*, however, is from *karmāra*). As regards lingualization cf. Turner, JRAS. 1924, pp. 555 ff., 582 ff. (*daṇḍa*, however, is not for *dandra*; see Lidén, *Stud. z. altind. und vergl. Sprachg.*, p. 80).

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Of the Prākrits Māhārāṣṭrī held pre-eminence by its use in drama, whence it was introduced perhaps by Kālidāsa from lyric poetry, and by its adoption for epic poetry. Çaurasenī was normally the prose Prākrit, though it appears to have been occasionally used in verse; its employment in prose outside the drama was probably once much wider than was later the case when the Jains used a form of Māhārāṣṭrī for prose as well as for verse, though the presence of Çaurasenī forms in prose suggests that Māhārāṣṭrī is here intrusive.² Çaurasenī was markedly more closely akin to Sanskrit than Māhārāṣṭrī; its place of origin was within the sphere of the strongest influence of Sanskrit, and it remained in specially close relation with it both in morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. Hence it was appropriately used for persons of good position in the drama. Māgadhī, on the other hand, was reserved for those of low rank, and, though tales¹ were composed in it, it was of comparatively minor importance. The *Nāṭyaçāstra*, perhaps in the third century A. D., enumerates other dramatic dialects (*vibhāṣās*) which are clearly of no real popular origin; such are Dākṣiṇātyā, Prācyā, Āvantī, and Ḍhākkī or Ṭākkī, which are mere varieties of Çaurasenī, while Cāṇḍālī and Çākārī are species of Māgadhī.² Paiçācī, though practically unknown in the extant dramas, enjoyed, it appears, a considerable vogue in the popular tale, as a result, doubtless, of the fame of the *Bṛhatkathā*.

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² Jacobi, *Bhavisatta Kaha*, pp. 88 ff.; RSO. ii. 231 ff.

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¹ Probably in verse, like Māhārāṣṭrī and Apabhrañça tales; Daṇḍin, i. 38; Rudraṭa, xvi. 26. Daṇḍin's Gauḍī Prākrit may be Māgadhī; he mentions also Lāṭī.

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² Cf. Keith, *Sanskrit Drama*, pp. 140 ff., 337; Gawroński, KZ. xliv. 247 ff. Iranian traits in Çākārī are not proved (JRAS. 1925, pp. 237 ff.); the points adduced all are essentially Māgadhī (cf. *ibid.*, pp. 218 ff.).

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The comparatively late date at which Māhārāṣṭrī appears to have come into fame, as indicated by its exclusion until late from the drama, suggests that some other Prākrit was employed for poetry before its rise into repute. Jacobi has found traces of such a Prākrit in the verses cited in the *Nāṭyaçāstra*;³ it was marked by the facultative retention or change or loss of intervocalic consonants, and was akin on the one hand to Çaurasenī, for example in such forms as *sadisa* for *sadṛça* and the gerund in *iya*, while it shared with Māhārāṣṭrī the locative in *ammi* and the gerund in *ūṇa*; from these local indications he suggests that it had its centre in Ujjayinī. It was, he holds, from this dialect that the softening of *t* to *d* passed into Çaurasenī, which in Açvaghoṣa hardly shows any trace of it, and also in the dialect, otherwise similar to Jain Māhārāṣṭrī, which on this account Pischel⁴ named Jain Çaurasenī. This poetic Prākrit, like Çaurasenī, is essentially closely akin to Sanskrit.

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³ *Bhavisatta Kaha*, pp. 84 ff. He does not touch on its relation to Pāli.

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⁴ *Op. cit.*, § 21.

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