Please forgive me if I'm way off base here, but I thought, and every (comparative) linguistics book that I've ever read supports this, that the term "Prakrit" only applies to the IE Indian vernaculars, those that, like Sanskrit, are derived from Old Indic dialects. Some books indicate that the Prakrits are derived from Sanskrit; others indicate that they share a common ancestor with Sanskrit. The definition of "Prakrit" as I understand and have given it would exclude the Dravidian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. Also, everything that I've read indicates that Burushaski and Nahali are isolates and, therefore, also not Prakrits or derived from Prakrits. As for Dardic, at least some people consider it a separate branch of the Indo-Iranian family. Would that qualify it as having derived from a Prakrit?
Andy Howey
"S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...> wrote:
//snip//
Prakrits (e.g., Ardhama_gadhi, Bhojpuri, Dardic, Nahali,
Burus.a_ski) should also be included on such lists. On Prakrits, let
me note that there is a definitional problem on this Indo- segment.
In my definition, Prakrits include dialects of mleccha such as:
Proto-Gujarati, Proto-Kannada, Proto-Tamil, Proto-Telugu.