Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c11.s5.2

c11.s5.2

The best Sanskrit of the times seems to have been current in the country of the Kuru-Pañchālas and probably also of the Uttara-Kurus in Kashmir and men went there to study the language [*Śatap.*, iii, 2, 3, 15 (a passage difficult, however, to construe); *Kaushītaki Br.*, vii, 6]. The *Śatapatha* [iii, 2, 1, 23. 24] also refers to barbarisms in speech which were to be avoided. These barbarisms were probably characteristic of the Vrātyas who are described in the *Pañchaviṁśa Brāhmaṇa* [xvii, 1, 9] as speaking the language of the initiated (*dīkshita-vāch*), though they, uninitiated (*a-dīkshita*), do so with difficulty for “they call what is easy of utterance (*a-durukta*) difficult to utter”. This shows that the Vrātyas were very probably Aryans who had been already developing prakritic forms of speech.¹