The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c12.s5.1

c12.s5.1

In Kālidāsa we find the normal state of the Prākrits in the later drama, Çaurasenī for the prose speeches, and Māhārāṣṭrī for the verses.¹ The police officers and the fisher in the Çakuntalā use Māgadhī, but the king’s brother-in-law, who is in charge of the police and is a faint echo of the Çakāra, speaks, as we have the drama, neither Çakārī nor Māgadhī nor Dākṣiṇātyā but simply Çaurasenī. By this time, of course, we may assume that Prākrit for the drama had been stereotyped by the authority of Vararuci’s Prākrit grammar, and that it differed considerably from the spoken dialect; there would be clear proof if the Apabhraṁça verses of the Vikramorvaçī could safely be ascribed to Kālidāsa. The Māhārāṣṭrī unquestionably owes its vogue to the outburst of lyric in that dialect, which has left its traces in the anthology of Hāla and later texts, and which about the period of Kālidāsa invaded the epic.²