1838.] rocks of Girnar in Gujerat, and Dhauli in Cuttach 279 



ciple be read with the h first, bdhmona, as nearer to the Sanskrit. At 

 Dhauli this word is invariably written bdbhana. In modern Pali it is 

 written brdhmano with the dental n. 



In the inflexion of the seventh case we have at Girnar often ^£_ mhi 

 (or hmi) ; at Dhauli 'fa msi or si. These correspond of course with 

 the Sanskrit 'mm in ^%«r, &c. and all forms are allowed in the facile 

 grammar of the written Pali, along with the regular locative in e. It is 

 impossible not to recognize the Hindi postposition men in the Girnar 

 form of the locative case. 



The conjunctive ^ va seems to be used for 'and' as frequently as vd for 

 < or.' It is the Persian conjunction, and is used in written Hindi though 

 seldom in the spoken tongue ; aur ^\X the pandit pointed out in one 

 place written }\ "f dro, but I doubt the reading. 



A great many other instances might be cited to prove that the lan- 

 guage of Girnar is not precisely either pure Sanskrit, or the pure Pali of 

 books: but as the buddhist volumes of Ceylon are acknowledged to be 

 posterior by 450 years to the death of Sakya, his tenets having been first 

 reduced to writing, in Ceylon, about 90 years before Christ, some 

 change may be allowed to have taken place in the mean time, and we may 

 presume that the Girnar inscriptions represent the Pali (or vulgar) tongue 

 as it was in the time of Asoka on the west of India, as the pillars shew it 

 to us as it was pronounced on the east, or in Magadha proper. Now it is 

 curious enough that some of the distinguishing traits of the pillar dialect 

 are just such as are pointed out by the grammarians of a later day as con- 

 stituting the differences between Magadhi and Pali, — names it must be 

 remembered which are indifferently employed in Ceylon, Ava, Siam and 

 even China, to express the sacred language of the Buddhists. Thus, 

 quoting from MM. Lassen and Burnouf's Essai sur le Pali p. 156, — . 

 " Ra devient la en Magadhi ; poulise, Pali pouriso, Ce changement 

 a quelque fois lieu en Prakrit, jamais en Pali" — and again in the next 

 paragraph, — " en Magadhi le nominatif singulier est en e (which takes 

 the places of visarga) tandis qu'en Prakrit et en Pali il est termine en 

 o." The use of o in lieu of e for the masc. nominative is general, but 

 not universal in the text before us. The conclusion, to which the same 

 savans were led at that early period of their studies, may now require 

 a slight modification : — 



" Une comparaison attentive du Prakrit et du Pali nous a conduit a 

 cette conclusion: 



" 1. Qu'il existe, entre ces deux dialectes, une ressemblance telle 

 qu'on peut avancer quils sont presque identiques ; 

 2 n 2 



