A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s4.1

c7.s4.1

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: