A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s5.20

c7.s5.20

There is no reason to suppose that Apabhraṅça formed a necessary step towards composition in vernaculars, and in Mahārāṣṭra and Kashmir Apabhraṅça appears to have been unknown, while in the latter region vernacular poetry appears to have been practised in the eleventh century. Literary evidence of compositions in the vernaculars is fragmentary, but at least from the twelfth century there was a Hindī literature, from the thirteenth one in Marāṭhī, and probably enough still earlier dates may be assigned to the adaptation of vernaculars to literary uses.¹