Prakrits and Early schools of Buddhism

The following is quoted from S.M. Katre (1945), pg. 22-4, for your interest:

  "Apabhrangsha was also used in the East of India by the Northern Buddhists.
The _Dohaako.sa_ of Kaa.nha and Saraha is in this dialect, the first of whom
is ascribed to c. 700 A.D.  According to Viniitadeva (8th century A.D.) the
Sammitiiya sect of Buddhists employed Apabhrangsha, the Mahaasanghikas
[used] Prakrit, and the Sthaviravaadins Paishaacii. [...] According to
Buddhist tradition ... the Sthaviras, one of the four main schools of
Vaibhaa.sikas, are said to have used Paishaacii as their literary medium,
but of this no trace is available to us."

  --I have never once read before that the early sects of Buddhism could have
been (in part or in whole) defined by their Prakrit of preference for their
own writing.  It is strange enough to think that men who knew one artificial
language (i.e., Pali) would learn yet another, or at any rate use another
(i.e., if they knew it first), for their own discourses.

E.M.



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