4 SANSKRIT, PRAKRIT, AND APABHRANCA
nominal declension. Borrowings from other dialects can here and there be confidently asserted ; in some cases the forms thus found may be regarded as of equal age with those of the Rgveda, as in the case of words in / and jajjhati, with^/Vz in lieu of ks for Aryan gzh, but in other instances we find forms 1 which are phonetically more advanced than those normal in the Rgveda, and attest loans either from tribes whose speech had undergone more rapid change, perhaps as the result of greater admixture with non-Aryan elements, or from lower classes of the population. Thus we have irregular cerebrals as in kata beside krta, kata be- side karta ; ch for ps in krchra ; jy for dy in jyotis ; i for r in githira ; busa for brga, and many other anomalous forms. To localize these dialects is in the main impossible ; the rhotacism of the Rgveda accords with its western origin, for the same phenomenon is Iranian. The use of / is Jater a sign of eastern connexion, and in one stereotyped phrase, sure du/titd, we per- haps find e (or'az, as in the eastern Prakrit.
From the language of t he R gveda_yif can_trace a steady dev^lo^rire"rTr~to~CrassTcal_ Sanskrit, through the later. Sarhhitas and the Brahmanas. The development, however, is of a special 'kind; if is hot the spontaneous growth of a popular speech un- hampered by tradition and unregulated by grammatical studies. The language of the tribes whose priests cherished the hymns of the Rgveda was subject doubtless to all the normal causes of speech change, accentuated in all likelihood by the gradual- addition to the community of non-Aryan elements as the earlier inhabitants of the north, Munda or Dravidian tribes, fell under their control. 2 But, at least in the upper classes of the population, alteration was opposed by the constant use of the sacred language and by the study devoted to it. Parallels to such restricted evolution are not hard to find ; the history of the Greek Koine, of Latin from its fixation in the first century B.C., and of modern English, attests the power of literature to stereotype. In India
1 In some cases, no doubt, forms have been altered in transmission.
2 Cf. W. Petersen, JAOS. xxxii. 414-28 ; Michelson, JAOS. xxxiii. 145-9 '< Keith, Camb. Hist. India, i. 109 if. Common sense renders Dravidian and Munda influences inevitable, though proof may be difficult ; Przyluski, MSL. xxii. 305 ff. ; BSL. xxiv. uo, 355ff., xxv. 66ff. ; Bloch, xxv. iff.; Levi, JA.ccin. 1-56. Przyluski endeavours to prove Austroasiatic influence on culture ; JA. ccv. 101 fl". ; ccviii. 1 fl". ; BSL. xxvi. 98 ff. Cf. Poussin, Indo-europiens, pp. 198 ff. ; Chatterji, i. 170 ff., 199.
