CHARACTER AND EXTENT OF THE USE OF SANSKRIT 15
of Sanskrit are apparent ; in the next century on one view 2 is found the first inscription which on the whole may be called Sanskrit, and Sanskritisms are on the increased In the first century A. D. Prakiit still prevails, but, though it is prominent also in the next century, we find the great Sanskrit inscription of Rudradaman which displays clearly the existence of an elaborate Sanskrit literature. In the next century Sanskrit and Prakrit contend, in the fourth Prakrit becomes rare with the Brahmanical revival under the Gupta dynasty, and from the fifth it almost disappears in Northern India. A parallel process was going on in literature ; in such Buddhist works as the Lalitavistara and the Mahavastu we find the results of an effort to convert a Prakrit into Sanskrit, and similar results are to be found in other fields, as in the medical tieatises of the Bower manuscript. From this the Buddhists soon advanced to the stage in which Sanskrit proper was used, as in the Divyavadana, perhaps of the second century A. D. 3 The Jains showed more conservatism, but even they ultimately accepted the use of Sanskrit as legitimate. Serious competition with Sanskrit as the language of literature again arose when the Mahomedan conquests brought Persian into play, and when the vernaculars in the period shortly after A. D. 1000 began first to influence Sanskrit and then to develop into literary languages.
The true home of the Qistas is given by Patanjali as Aryavarta, but even in his time the Dekhan was a home of Sanskrit ; Katyayana himself seems to have lived there in the third century E. C. Yaska 4 (c. 500 B. C.) already mentions a southern use of the Vedic word vijamatr, and Patanjali records the love in the south for derivative formations and the use of sarasi, large pond. Even in Southern India, despite the existence of a vigorous Kanarese and Tamil literature, Sanskrit inscriptions appear from
1 On sacrificial post at Isapur, 34th year of Vasiska, 33 B. c. ace. Fleet, JRAS. 1910, pp. 1315 ff. ; Hoernle, Bower MS., p 65 ; Ann. Rep. A. S., India, 1910-11, pp. 39 ff. It is much more probably of the second century A. D. (' A. D. 102) ; an inscr. of Huviska shows almost correct Sanskrit; JRAS. 1934, pp. 400 ff.
3 Franke, Pah und Sanskrit, pp. 13, 58; Rapson, JRAS. 1904, p. 449.
3 Przyluski {La ligtnde de Vimftreur Afoka, pp. 14 ff.) ascribes much to the influence of Mathura and its Sarvastivadin school, and places its use of Sanskrit in the Acokavadana at least in the second century B. C. (cf. pp. 166 ff.).
- vi. 9. Cf. Buhler, WZKM. i. 3. For Aryavarta, see I A. xxxiv. 179 (Madhyadeca)
and Kavyamimdhsa, p. xxiv.
