A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s4.22

c7.s4.22

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.