A History of Sanskrit Literature c7.s5.5

c7.s5.5

The essential fact regarding Apabhraṅça is that it is the collective term employed to denote literary languages not Sanskrit or Prākrit. Bhāmaha⁴ expressly gives this threefold division, and Daṇḍin⁵ expressly says that Apabhraṅça is the term applied to the idioms of the Ābhīras, &c., when they appear in poetry. Guhasena of Valabhī, whose inscriptions have dates from A. D. 559–69, is declared to have composed poems in the three languages, Sanskrit, Prākrit, and Apabhraṅça. Rudraṭa,⁶ in the ninth century, asserts that Apabhraṅça is manifold through the difference of lands, doubtless in agreement with Daṇḍin. Hemacandra also does not identify Apabhraṅça with the vernaculars. The vernacular (*deçabhāṣā*) is a different thing; hetairai are required to be skilled in the eighteen vernaculars according to the Jain canon; the *Kāmasūtra*, in enumerating their sixty-four accomplishments, includes knowledge of vernaculars as well as of literary speeches (*kāvyakriyā*); moreover, it preserves the interesting notice that a man of taste would mingle his vernacular with Sanskrit, as is the way with modern vernaculars, not with Apabhraṁśa. The identification of the vernaculars and Apabhraṁśa is given as the opinion of some authorities by the commentator of the *Prākṛta Piṅgala*, and other late authorities adopt this view. But the oldest authority who has been cited¹ for it is the Kashmirian Kṣemendra (11th cent.), and it is extremely doubtful whether he meant anything of the sort when he refers to poems in vernacular; it is as likely as not that in Kashmir, as probably in the case of Mahārāṣṭra, Apabhraṁśa was never a literary language, vernacular poems supervening directly on Prākrit poetry.