PROBLEMS IN INDIAN LANGUAGES 119 



with the evidence of contemporary coins, remains an important 

 problem to be solved by Indian scholarship. Medieval Prakrit has, 

 further, a recorded literary use from about 400 A.D., mainly as the 

 vehicle, in a particular dialect, of the extensive religious writings of 

 the Jains. It was, however, also employed in the composition of 

 secular works, for instance epic poems, and as the language spoken, 

 in various dialects, by the less educated classes in the Sanskrit 

 dramas. Only one play composed entirely in Prakrit, and dating 

 from about 900 A.D., is extant. This work has been edited in model 

 fashion, by Dr. Konow, as well as translated by Professor Lanman, 

 in the Harvard Oriental Series. I may observe, in passing, that that 

 series promises to mark a new stage in the method of editing Indian 

 texts. It will, I think, for the first time set an example of how 

 texts should really be edited so as to bring out their full value as 

 instruments of further research. I myself completed, just before 

 leaving England, a contribution to the series in two volumes, in 

 which this object has been kept steadily in view. 



A vast advance in the study of medieval Prakrit has been made 

 by the publication of Professor Pischel's epoch-making Prakrit 

 grammar in Biihler and Kielhorn's Encyclopaedia. Now for the first 

 time the phonology and inflection of the various Prakrit dialects have 

 been stated and distinguished. The main thing that has to be done 

 is to bring out thoroughly scholar-like editions of the large number 

 of Prakrit texts which exist. It is only on such a foundation that the 

 various dialects of Prakrit can be satisfactorily kept apart and their 

 exact historical relationships to the Aryan vernaculars of modern 

 India clearly defined. Unfortunately the workers are here even 

 fewer than in the field of Pali studies, though a small band of pri- 

 marily Sanskrit scholars, such as Weber, Biihler, Pischel, Jacobi, 

 Leumann, have already done much valuable pioneering work. Hence 

 the time is probably far distant when the whole of Prakrit literature 

 will be accessible in a thoroughly trustworthy form, when its lin- 

 guistic facts will have been sifted throughout, when its history 

 will have been written, and when all the material extracted from 

 it will have been utilized to fill in many of the details wanting to 

 complete the still very imperfect picture we at present have of the 

 social, political, and religious aspects of India down to the period of 

 the Muhammadan conquest about 1000 A.D. 



About the beginning of our era the Buddhists, and to a less extent 

 the Jains, commenced to learn Sanskrit, so that by the tenth century 

 Sanskrit was practically the only literary language of India. In this 

 way Sanskrit became almost the exclusive vehicle of the literature of 

 northern Buddhism, which spread to Nepal, Tibet, and China. With 

 it a vast number of Sanskrit Buddhistic works were introduced into 

 those countries and translated into Tibetan and Chinese. Thus 



