CHARACTERISTICS AND DEVELOPMENT IN LITERATURE 23
marks in part a successful attempt to adapt Sanskrit prose, as known at Mathura and elsewhere, to Buddhist use. The degree of cultivation of those who endeavoured to write in Sanskrit might vary greatly ; thus the Sanskritization of the treatises in the Bower Manuscript, perhaps of the fourth century A.D., is comparatively good in the case of those on medicine, and de- cidedly poor in those on divination and incantation. In part the deviation from Sanskrit as laid down in the grammars is purely a case of Prakritic forms intruding scarcely disguised into the texts, but in other instances popular influence reveals itself in a Sanskrit which ignores delicate distinctions and confuses forms. The distinction between Prakritisms and careless Sanskrit is not absolute, but it is convenient and legitimate.
Thus we have in the phonology of this popular Sanskrit as seen in the Bower MS. some confusion of r and ri, of n and «, of ( , s, and s ; metrical lengthening and shortening of vowels is not rare ; ml becomes mbl, and rarely a is prefixed as in alatd. In Sandhi hiatus and hyper-Sandhi, even to the extent of an elided consonant {afvibhyanumatah), are known, while a is occasionally elided when initial. In declension we find is and reversely u as feminine nominatives for i and us ; is is often replaced >y yas as the accusative feminine, and in stems are treated as /stems, as in pittinam for pittinam. In the verb we have simplification in class, as in lihet for lihyat,piset for pinsydt; and, as in the epic, very free interchange of active and middle forms ; the gerunds in tva and yd are confused. Stem formation shows frequently the mixture of bases in a, i, or u for those in as, is, or us, and, rarely, such a base as hantdra from the accusative of hantr ; there is con- fusion in feminine suffixes, as in ghna for ghni, caturthd for catur- thi, while ordinals in composition are sometimes replaced by cardinals. Very characteristic is confusion of gender, especially between masculine and neuter, more rarely between masculine and feminine or feminine and neuter. Case confusion is common, as is non-observation of rules of concord and confusion of numbers, white the interpolation of particles within compounds or sentences, absolute constructions, and very loosely compacted clauses are common.
Existing as it did side by side with Prakrit dialects, it was inevitable that there should be frequent borrowings on either
