> According to Colin P. Masica in _The Indo-Aryan Languages_ (Cambridge
Language >Surveys, 1991), Vedic "was based apparently on a far western
dialect, perhaps influenced >by Iranian". That's as opposed to Sanskrit,
which he says was based on a midland >dialect. If that's indeed the case,
and if at least some of the Prakrits were derived from the >same source as
Vedic, then that could bear out your hypothesis. What do you think?
The Prakrits seem to be not directly from Vedic, but from other sources. It
has been suggested that it was a dialect east of that which gave rise to
Sanskrit, but since we have to look at a variety of origins, it may be a
mistake to exclude northwestern dialects. See Masica (op cit above pages
51-52). At any rate, we cannot derive the Prakrits directly from either
Sanskrit or Vedic.
Peter