Prakrits (warning long post)

For those who might be confused about the relationship
between Sanskrit and the prakrits, I've posted below an
excerpt from the book 'Sanskrit: An Introduction to the
Classical Language' by Michael Coulson explaining what
I think is the mainstream view of the matter. I insist
that any further debate on the matter procede only after
reading and understanding, even if not agreeing with,
the contents of this excerpt, so as to avoid further
misuse of terminology and the mutual misunderstanding
which that inevitably must entail.

David


xvii

The speech introduced by the Aryans into India developed and
diversified, and the major modern languages of Northern India are
descended from it. The generic term for such languages is Indo-Aryan.
One may conveniently divide the development of Indo-Aryan into three
stages: Old, Middle and Modern. Old Indo-Aryan is equivalent to
Sanskrit only in the widest sense of the latter term, and is divided
principally between Vedic and the later Classical Sanskrit. Our
record of Old Indo-Aryan begins with the hymns of the Rgveda, which
date back to at least 1000 BC and are the product of a considerable
literary skill. That they were composed a fair time after the arrival
of the Aryans in India is shown both by the absence of any reference
to a homeland outside India and by divergences, principally phonetic,
in the language itself from what can be reconstructed as the common
Indo-Iranian tongue. Intermediate between the language of the Rgveda
and that of the Classical period is the language of the Brahmanas,
prose works which seek to interpret the mystical significance of the
Vedic ritual, the earliest of them written well before the middle of
the first millennium BC. The Upanisads are a part of the Brahmana
literature.
With the passage of time the language of even the educated
priestly class diverged more and more from that of the sacred hymns
themselves, and it became increasingly a matter of concern that the
hymns should be transmitted without corruption, in order to preserve
their religious efficacy. Consequently, a study began to be made of
the principles of linguistic, and more particularly of phonetic,
analysis. From this developed a grammatical science which concerned
itself not only with the sacred language but also with contemporary
educated speech. The grammar of Panini, the Astadhyayi, usually
attributed to the fourth century BC, is evidently the culmination of
a long and sophisticated grammatical tradition, though the perfection
of his own work caused that of his predecessors to vanish.

xviii

In less than 4000 sutras, or brief aphorisms (supplemented on points
of detail by the grammarian Katyayana), he analyses the whole
phonology and morphology of Sanskrit. He anticipates much of the
methodology of modern formal grammar: his grammar is generative and
in some respects transformational. It cannot, however, be compared
very directly with modern grammars, since its form is geared to the
needs of oral transmission, and Panini could not avail himself of the
mathematical symbols and typographical conventions of the written
page. The work was so brief that it could be recited from beginning
to end in a couple of hours. It was so comprehensive and accurate
that it quickly became the final authority on all questions of
correct usage. By Classical Sanskrit is meant essentially the
language codified by Panini.
The formal differences between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are
not enormous. Phonologically, the most obvious is a difference of
sandhi, whereby for instance a trisyllable such as viriam (or
viriyam) becomes a disyllable viryam. Morphologically, the wealth of
inflected forms is somewhat reduced, for instance by the
disappearance of the subjunctive. In vocabulary a fair number of
ancient Aryan words are lost, but the loss is far outweighed by the
acquisition of enormous numbers of words from non-Aryan sources.
Classical Sanskrit is based on a more easterly dialect of Old Indo-
Aryan than is the Rgveda, as is shown by the fact that it contributes
a number of words which preserve an original Indo-European l, where
the Rgvedic dialect (in common with Iranian) changes this sound to
r: thus both Vedic raghú 'swift, light' and Classical Sanskrit
laghu 'light, nimble' are cognate with Greek elakhús. Other Old
Indo-Aryan dialects existed; we have no direct record of them, but
from them various dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan evolved.
The beginnings of Middle Indo-Aryan antedate Panini, for the
speech of the ordinary people had been evolving faster than that of
the educated classes. The term samskrta means 'polished,
(grammatically) correct', and is in contrast with prakrta '(speech)
of the common people'. Just as Sanskrit interpreted in a wide sense
may conveniently stand for Old

xix

Indo-Aryan, so Prakrit, interpreted equally widely, may stand for
Middle Indo-Aryan. More narrowly, three stages of Middle Indo-Aryan
may be distinguished. The first is represented by Pali, the only
Indian language in which the earliest Buddhist scriptures have been
preserved on a large scale, and by the dialects used in the
inscriptions of the emperor Asoka (c. 250 BC). The process of
morphological simplification which distinguishes Classical from Vedic
here continues and is accompanied by drastic phonological
simplification, including a reduction in the number of vowels and a
simplification of consonant groups (thus Sansrkit traividya becomes
Pali tevijja ). These processes continue (for instance, with the
loss of many intervocalic consonants) in the second stage, that of
the Prakrits proper, including Maharastri, Sauraseni and Magadhi, and
the various dialects of the Jain scriptures. The third stage is
represented by Apabhramsa, a generic term for the further popular
evolution of Middle Indo-Aryan up to the end of the first millennium
AD, foreshadowing the final collapse of the old Indo-European
inflexional system and the emergence of the Modern Indo-Aryan
languages, Bengali, Hindi, Panjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, etc. Hindi in
its wider sense denotes a group of dialects spoken from Rajasthan to
Bihar: upon one particular dialect are based both the official
language of Pakistan, Urdu, and the official language of India,
(modem standard) Hindi. The term Hindustani is sometimes used
nowadays to denote the common substratum of these two languages,
lacking both the extreme Persianisation of Urdu and the extreme
Sanskritisation of Hindi.
The Sanskrit of Panini's time had the cachet not simply of being
the dialect of the educated classes but also of being much closer
than was the popular speech to the language of the sacred scriptures
themselves. Naturally the prestige of Sanskrit was resisted by those
who questioned the authority of the Vedas, and for this reason the
early writings of the Buddhists and the Jains are in varieties of
Middle Indo-Aryan; the Buddha is reported to have said that his
teachings should be given to the people in their own language.
Nevertheless, Sanskrit continued to be cultivated, and not merely by
the

xx

brahmins. Important evidence of this is provided by the two great
Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. They were recited and
handed down by non-brahmins (the Sutas} and their audience was a
popular one. Although their origins are no doubt more ancient, they
evidently belong in something like their present form to about the
beginning of the first millennium AD. Their language is Sanskrit, but
of a later kind than Panini's—Classical Sanskrit with an
admixture of minor features of Middle Indo-Aryan morphology and
syntax. It is Sanskrit composed instinctively rather than according
to Panini's rules by men for whom Sanskrit was not too remote from
their own informal speech. The advantage of using Sanskrit, in
addition to the dignity which it imparted to the verse, lay in its
role as a lingua franca uniting the various regions of Aryan India.
One may compare the way a Londoner and a Glaswegian often find the
English of the BBC easier to understand than each other's.
As Middle Indo-Aryan developed and its various dialects drew
further apart, this role as a lingua franca grew increasingly
important, and at a time when brahminical influence was increasing.
In the early centuries AD, first in the north and later in the south,
Sanskrit became the only acceptable language both for administration
and for learned communication. The Buddhist Asvaghosa (second century
AD) is a significant figure in the process. While early Buddhist
literature had first eschewed Sanskrit completely, then compromised
with a hybrid language or at least with a non-Paninian Sanskrit, he
himself not merely writes Classical Sanskrit but is a master of
Sanskrit literary style, and is as important in the history of
Sanskrit literature as in the history of Buddhism.
This is the beginning of the great period of Classical Sanskrit,
and it lasted for something like a thousand years (possibly a little
less for creative literature, but several centuries longer in various
fields of speculative thought). For the early centuries AD our
knowledge is sketchy, for much of what was written has perished. Part
of the reason for Asvaghosa's literary importance is that he is very
nearly the only significant predecessor of the poet Kalidisa whose
work has survived.

xxi

Kalidasa is commonly dated to the early fifth century, and on reading
his poetry one cannot doubt that it represents the culmination of a
great tradition; yet he is the earliest of the major classical poets,
Perhaps, like Panini, Kalidasa eclipsed his predecessors and made
their work seem not worth preserving.
By now Sanskrit was not a mother tongue but a language to be
studied and consciously mastered. This transformation had come about
through a gradual process, the beginnings of which are no doubt
earlier than Panini himself. Something of the true position must be
reflected in the drama, where not merely the characters of low social
status but also the women and young children speak some variety of
Prakrit. Kalidasa learnt his Sanskrit from the rules of a grammarin
living some 700 years before his time. Such a situation may well
strike the Western reader as paradoxical. Our nearest parallel is in
the position of Latin in Medieval Europe, There is, however, an
important difference. Few would deny Cicero or Vergil a greater
importance in Latin literature than any Medieval author. Conversely,
few Sanskritists would deny that the centre of gravity in Sanskrit
literature lies somewhere in the first millennium AD, for all that
its authors were writing in a so-called 'dead language'.
On this point it may be useful to make a twofold distinction
between a living and a dead language, and between a natural and a
learned one. A language is natural when it is acquired and used
instinctively; it is living when people choose to converse and
formulate ideas in it in preference to any other. To the modern
Western scholar Sanskrit is a dead as well as a learned language. To
Kalidasa or Samkara it was a learned language but a living one. (The
term 'learned' is not entirely satisfactory, but the
term 'artificial', which is the obvious complementary of 'natural',
is normally reserved for application to totally constructed languages
such as Esperanto.)
The literary medium of any language contains elements of learned
speech. Apart from any tendency to conform to conscious grammatical
rules, one may observe a limitation or regularisation of sentence
patterns, and a widening of vocabulary by the itemisation of more
complex ideas. In the expression

xxii

of a given idea, provided that in both cases it is contained in a
single sentence, the syntax will therefore be simpler in formal than
in conversational speech. Compare the subject–verb–object
simplicity of 'an unexpected arrival will admittedly affect our
numbers' with the relative syntactical complexity of 'it's true that
how many we're going to be will depend on whether anyone turns up
that we aren't expecting'. (A particular factor affecting the written
style of English is the need to avoid sentences made seriously
ambiguous by the lack of an appropriate voice inflection.) Living
languages, whether natural or learned, change and develop. But when a
learned language such as literary English is closely tied to, and
constantly revitalised by, a natural idiom, its opportunities for
independent growth are limited. Sanskrit provides a fascinating
example of a language developing in complete freedom from such
constraints as an instrument of intellectual and artistic expression.
To say that Classical Sanskrit was written in conformity with
Panini's rules is true, but in one sense entirely misleading. Panini
would have been astounded by the way in which Bana or Bhavabhuti or
Abhinavagupta handled the language. It is precisely the fact that
Sanskrit writers insisted on using Sanskrit as a living and not as a
dead language that has often troubled Western scholars. W. D.
Whitney, a great but startlingly arrogant American Sanskritist of the
nineteenth century, says of the Classical language, 'Of linguistic
history there is next to nothing in it all; but only a history of
style, and this for the most part showing a gradual depravation, an
increase of artificiality and an intensification of certain more
undesirable features of the language—such as the use of passive
constructions and of participles instead of verbs, and the
substitution of compounds for sentences.' Why such a use of passives,
participles and compounds should be undesirable, let alone depraved,
is left rather vague, and while there have been considerable advances
in linguistic science in the past fifty years there seems to have
been nothing which helps to clarify or justify these strictures.
Indeed, Whitney's words would not be worth resurrecting if strong
echoes of them did not still survive in some quarters.

xxiii

Acceptance of Panini's rules implied a final stabilisation of
the phonology of Sanskrit, and also (at least in the negative sense
that no form could be used which was not sanctioned by him) of its
morphology. But Panini did not fix syntax. To do so explicitly and
incontrovertibly would be difficult in any language, given several
ways of expressing the same idea and various other ways of expressing
closely similar ideas. Certain major morphological simplifications
typical of Middle Indo-Aryan were prevented by Panini's codification:
thus Sanskrit retains a middle voice and an obligatory dual number.
On the other hand, the way Prakrit dealt with all past tenses,
replacing them with a past participle and where necessary a passive
construction, being a negative procedure could be imitated by
Sanskrit (see Chapter 4), and as a result in certain styles of
Classical Sanskrit a past finite tense is something of a rarity.
Because it did not occur to Panini to prohibit such a construction,
or to limit its use to particular circumstances supposedly 'Paninian'
Sanskrit could be written in a quite non-Paninian way, eschewing a
whole mass of difficult forms and conforming to the usage of the
popular language.
But in other and more important respects the syntactical changes
wrought in Sanskrit took it further from popular speech. Indeed, one
such may be distinguished which actually depends upon the
preservation of the full Old Indo-Aryan case system, namely the
increasing exploitation of various cases to represent
certain 'abstract' syntactical relationships instrumental or ablative
to express cause, dative purpose, locative circumstance and
hypothesis, an abstract accusative with a verb of motion to express
change of state, and so on This development is inseparable from the
most striking change of all, the exploitation of nominal composition.
In Vedic noun compounds are hardly more frequent than in Homeric
Greek, but their frequency increases throughout the history of the
language. More important still, the compounds which occur in the
earlier language are seldom of more than two members, whereas in the
later language the occurrence in a single short sentence of several
compounds of four or five members is perfectly normal, and in certain
styles compounds

xxiv

of twenty or more members are not thought excessive. Here again,
advantage has been taken of a negative freedom. It is, in fact, an
important feature of compounds that, co-ordinatives apart, they are
binary in structure (i.e. can be analysed through repeated
bisection—see particularly Chapter 7). Panini gives rules for the
construction of compounds. By applying these rules recursively,
compounds of any length may be built up. At one and the same time
Panini is obeyed and bypassed. One may indeed wonder to what extent
the style of the grammatical sutras themselves encouraged this
process; evolved to meet very specific scientific needs and utilising
cases and compounds in a way quite foreign to the natural language,
it may well have served as a partial model for other types of
discourse.