1864.] On the origin of the Hindvi Language. 491 



He was a minstrel in the court of Prithviraj, the valiant knight of 

 Kanouj, and appealed to the people in language suited to their capa- 

 city. It will be no presumption then to take the language of his epic 

 as the vernacular of the then flourishing kingdom of Kanouj and 

 of Northern India generally. How long before the time of Chand, 

 that language was the vernacular of India, it is impossible now to 

 determine, for from the time of Vikramaditya the great to that of 

 Prithviraj, we have no reliable information of any kind regarding the 

 vernaculars. The literary work of every-day life was in those days 

 transacted in. the Sanskrita, and the language of familiar intercourse 

 was never thought worthy of record. 



Passing over per saltum the gap between the time of Prithviraj 

 and Vikrama, we find in the first century B. C, a number of dialects 

 bearing the names of some of the principal provinces of India, such 

 as Behar, Mahratta, &c. These were undoubtedly the vernaculars of 

 those provinces at the time, for they could not otherwise have taken 

 their local designations, nor assumed the position they held in the 

 dramatic literature of the time of Vikramaditya. Their mutual differ- 

 ences were but slight, not much more prominent than what may be 

 noticed in the English as spoken in London, Wales and Yorkshire ; 

 and they were all known by the common name of the Prakrita. Pro- 

 fessor Wilson, it is true, was of opinion that the Prakrita could not 

 have been a spoken dialect, but his arguments have been so fully met 

 and so frequently refuted by Max Moiller, Sykes, Weber, Lassen and 

 a host of other distinguished scholars, that I need not dwell upon 

 them here. 



Two centuries before Vikramaditya, As'oka appealed to his people in 

 favour of Buddhism in a language which has been called the Pali. It 

 was a form of Prakrita standing midway between the language of 

 Vararuchi's grammar and the Sanskrita of Panini. Whether it was 

 ever a vernacular of India has been doubted, and some have gone the 

 length of calling it a " quasi religious" or a " sacred dialect." But 

 " a careful examination of the As'oka edicts," to quote what I have 

 elsewhere said, " clearly shews that it is a stage in the progress or 

 growth of the Sanskrita in its onward course from the Vedie period 

 to the vernaculars of our day, produced by a natural process of pho- 

 netic decay and dialectic regeneration, which can never be possible 

 except in the case of a spoken dialect. Professor Max Miiller, advert- 



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