Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/250

228 I shall quote generally those verses which have been composed in that Māgadhi which is very much allied to Bengali, or which may be reasonably supposed to be proto-Bengali. I use this word of caution here, that some examples will disclose the fact that some authors in collecting obsolete প্রাকৃত words could not discriminate between different provincial forms, and as such mixed up the forms of different languages in one and the same poem. The first example given below is of a poem which was composed to describe the expedition of হমীর of admittedly recent time.

It should first be noted that this metre of প্রাকৃত which was taken up by the author is move allied to Bengali metre than to any other. The dropping of the locative sign