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236 demonstrated in the previous lectures; for the full demonstration of it, the next lecture which will be the last, has been reserved. By keeping up the metaphor, I may say that the limpid stream of this river running parallel to the artificial channel of Classical Sanskrit, from a dim past to the second century B. C, is distinctly noticeable. If the Jaina inscriptions unearthed at Muttra, be of the second century A. D., we may unhesi­tatingly say that the Māgadhi speech of the second cen­tury B. C. did not undergo a very severe change in its course of progress for full three centuries, but the chrono­logy of the Kushana time remains still unsettled. From this time forth to the end of the 5th century A. D., we can get no definite trace of this stream. During the 6th and the 7th centuries we find the Māgadhi speech in the Jaina scriptures considerably altered and modified; we learn from the records of Huen Tsiang that at this time the speech of Magadha prevailed over all the different provinces of Bengal, namely, over Rāḍha or Karṇa Suvarṇa, over Kie-chu-ho-khilo or Berhampur cum Nadīyā, over Northern Bengal, consisting of Puṇḍrabardhan and Barinda, and over Samataṭa, consisting of a portion of 24 Parganas, of Jessore and of a considerable portion of Eastern Bengal. How this speech was sub­sequently modified both in Behar and Bengal till the displacement of the Pāla rule in Behar by the western invaders, can only be guessed from some literary fragments which have been noticed in the previous lecture.

I have stated in a previous lecture that when the rulers of Western and Central India conquered Magadha-cum-Gauḍa of old, the civilization of Magadha found a safe shelter in the extensive country of Bengal, while the people who were left in Behar or Gauḍa-Magadha country, had to adopt in due course of time, not only many