Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/217

Rh current in urban tracts, that the word Pāli may be a decayed form of the non-Aryan term Palli (পল্লী = village). Certainly phonology does not offer any difficulty in the matter of this etymology, but facts of history do not support this proposition. In the first place, it cannot be proved that the people of the rural tracts differed widely from the people of the urban tracts, in the matter of speech. In the second place, the word Pāli cannot be proved to have ever been in use in India, to denote a speech, and consequently it will not be correct to suppose that the people of Ceylon coined the term, by making historical investigation regarding the rural origin of the speech of their canonical works. I must however mention here, a hitherto unnoticed fact, which may be urged with some force in support of the theory. To speak in praise of the speech in which the গাথাশপ্তশতি has been composed, the author has designated the language by the name 'পাড়অ' in the 2nd verse of the work. The commentator has explained the term 'পাড়অ' by প্রাকৃত very correctly, but he has not given us the derivation of the word. The word looks like an apabhranśa of the word পল্লী, since পাড়া of modern vernaculars can easily be derived from পল্লী. But as this solitary use of a comparatively later time cannot be connected with a cognate word of idiomatic use of earlier times, Pāli, as an Indian name for a প্রাকৃত, cannot be accepted. Again it is difficult to say, how far the word পাড়অ for প্রাকৃত is a genuine অপভ্রংশ form of a particular time; that we meet with fanciful corruptions of Sanskrit terms in the literary prākṛtas, will be specially discussed afterwards. পাউঅ, and পাউদ are two terms for প্রাকৃত which occur in the কর্পূরমঞ্জরী; in this case it is rather certain that the terms were coined to maintain the character of the prākṛtas as given in some Prākṛta Grammars. I do not propose to do away with the term