Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/30

8 These all when assembled at the capital would doubtless strike out some common language by which they could communicate with each other, just as in the present day Urdu is used all over India. But just as this Urdu is spoken incorrectly by those whose mother-tongue it is not, so that the Bengali corrupts it by an admixture of Bengali words and forms, and speaks it with a strong Bengali accent; so in ancient times these servants and artificers, collected from all corners of a vast empire, would speak the common lingua franca each with his own country twang; and the Prakrit of the plays would appear to be an exaggerated representation, or caricature, of these provincial brogues.

But there are works of a more serious character to which we can refer for a solution of the problem of the real nature of the Prakrits. In the sixth century before Christ there arose in Behar the great reformer Sakyamuni, surnamed Buddha, or “the wise,” who founded a religion which for ten centuries drove Brahmanism into obscurity, and was the prevailing creed of almost all India. The religious works of the Buddhist faith, which are extremely numerous and voluminous, have been the means of preserving to us the Magadhi Prakrit of those days. Buddhism was imported into Ceylon in 307, and the Magadhi dialect under the name of Pali has become the sacred language of that island.