Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/28

6 times absolutely unchanged. In teaching his pupils the true principles of speech, Pànini would naturally use these archaic words in preference to the corruptions current around him, and thus the language which he to a certain extent created was in great part a resuscitation of antiquated terms, and thus literally older than the popular dialects which in point of time preceded its creation.

Still there are words, and those not a few, which can be traced back to the Prakrits, as these popular forms of speech are called, though no signs of them exist in Sanskrit, and this is especially the case where two words of like meaning were current in the mouths of the people; one of which, from the accident of its being a popular form of some word in use in the Vedas, or from some other cause, was selected for refined and scholarly use, while the other was branded as vulgar, rejected, and left for the service of the masses. This class of words it is which I have classed as Aryan, though not Sanskritic.

To complete this branch of the subject, it is next necessary to describe briefly the position and relations of the Prakrits.

The Prakrit dialects are theoretically supposed to be those forms of the speech of the Aryans which were commonly used by the masses. In the earliest records we have, they are grouped under five heads, representing the local peculiarities of five provinces. First is the “lingua precipua,” or Mahârâshtrî, spoken in the country round the ancient city of Ujjayini, or Avanti, in Malwa. How far this language