The History of Indian Literature c9.16

c9.16

The second period of Indian literature, then, commences with the epoch when the separation of the language of the educated classes—of the written language—from the popular dialects was an accomplished fact. It is in the former alone that the literature is presented to us. Not till after the lapse of time did the vernaculars also in their turn produce literatures of their own,—in the first instance under the influence of the Buddhist religion, which addressed itself to the people as such, and whose scriptures and records, therefore, were originally, as for the most part they still are, composed in the popular idiom. The epoch in question cannot at present be precisely determined; yet we may with reasonable certainty infer the existence of the written language also, at a time when we are in a position to point to the existence of popular dialects; and with respect to these we possess historical evidence of a rare order, in those rock-inscriptions, of identical purport, which have been discovered at Girnar in the Gujarát peninsula, at Dhauli in Orissa, and at Kapur di Giri¹⁹⁸ in Kabul. J. Prinsep, who was the first to decipher them, and Lassen, refer them to the time of the Buddhist king Aśoka, who reigned from B.C. 259; but, according to the most recent investigations on the subject—by Wilson, in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," xii., 1850 (p. 95 of the separate impression)—they were engraved "at some period subsequent to B.C. 205,"∗ and are still, therefore, of uncertain date. However this question may be settled, it in any case results with tolerable certainty that these popular dialects were in existence in the third century B.C. But this is by no means to be set down as the limit for the commencement of their growth; on the contrary, the form in which they are presented to us sufficiently shows that a very considerable period must have elapsed since their separation from the ancient *bháshá*. This separation must therefore have taken place comparatively early, and indeed we find allusions to these vernaculars here and there in the Bráhmaṇas themselves.∗