614 On the Peculiarities of the Gdthd Dialect. [No. (?. 



the Gatha form too, we learn in another part of the same work 

 (Chap. 37th).* 



The Hon'bleMr. Tumour is of opinion that the religion of S'akya 

 was originally " preached and spread among the people" in the 

 Pali language, and yet in his edition of the Mahawanso he has 

 shewn that Mahindo son of Asoka translated the Buddhist scriptures 

 into Cingalese from the digest prepared at the convocation held in 

 the 27th year of his father's reign, and that from that recension the 

 Pali version was got up in the middle of the fifth century (459 @ 477 

 A. C.) admitting thereby that the language used at the third convo- 

 cation was other than Pali, for if Asoka's edition had been in that 

 language a new edition from the Cingalese recension would have 

 been quite uncalled for, if not useless. As a collateral evidence it 

 may be noticed that the history of S'akya as recorded in the Bur- 

 mese " Malalengara "Wottoo"t which is a faithful translation of the 

 Pali Lalita Vistara, bears a closer approximation to the narrative of 

 the Gatha than to that of the prose of the great Sutras, shewing the 

 former to be a more authentic, at least a more generally received, 

 version than the latter. 



The language of the Gatha is believed, by M. Burnouf, to be inter- 

 mediate between the Pali and the pure Sanskrita. Now, as the 

 Pali was the vernacular language of India from Cuttack to Kapur- 

 dagiri within three hundred years after the death of S'akya, it would 

 not be unreasonable to suppose that the Gatha which preceded it 

 was the dialect of the million at the time of S'akya's advent. If our 

 conjecture in this respect be right it would follow that the Sanskrita 

 passed into the Gatha six hundred years before the Christian era ; 

 that three hundred years subsequently it changed into the Pali and 

 that thence in two hundred years more, preceded the Prakrita and 

 its sister dialects the Sauraseni, the Dravidi and the Panchali, which 

 in their turn formed the present vernacular dialects of India. 



* When Buddhoghoso offered to undertake the translation of the Cingalese 

 version of the Pitakattayan into Pali, the priesthood of the Mahaviharo at Anura- 

 dhapuro " for the purpose of testing his qualifications, gave him only two ga'tha's, 

 saying; hence prove thy qualification; having satisfied ourselves on this point, 

 we will then let thee have all the books." Ante Vol. VI. p. 508. 



f For a translation of this work vide Journal American Oriental Society, Vol. 

 111. p. 1 et seq. 



