A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s4.8

c7.s4.8

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