A History of Sanskrit Literature c13.s2.16

c13.s2.16

This conclusion does not at first sight seem to be borne out by the linguistic evidence of the *Rāmāyaṇa*. For the epic (*ārsha*) dialect of the Bombay recension, which is practically the same as that of the *Mahābhārata*, both betrays a stage of development decidedly later than that of Pāṇini, and is taken no notice of by that grammarian. But it is, for all that, not necessarily later in date. For Pāṇini deals only with the refined Sanskrit of the cultured (*çishṭa*), that is to say, of the Brahmans, which would be more archaic than the popular dialect of wandering rhapsodists; and he would naturally have ignored the latter. Now at the time of the Açoka inscriptions, or hardly more than half a century later than Pāṇini, Prākrit was the language of the people in the part of India where the *Rāmāyaṇa* was composed. It is, therefore, not at all likely that the *Rāmāyaṇa*, which aimed at popularity, should have been composed as late as the time of Pāṇini, when it could not have been generally understood. If the language of the epic is later than Pāṇini, it is difficult to see how it escaped the dominating influence of his grammar. It is more likely that the popular Sanskrit of the epics received general currency at a much earlier date by the composition of a poem like that of Vālmīki. A searching comparative investigation of the classical Kāvyas will probably show that they are linguistically more closely connected with the old epic poetry, and that they deviate more from the Pāṇinean standard than is usually supposed.