Prakrit

“ Prakrit Literature.—The great mass of Prakrit literature is devoted to the Jaina religion, and, so far as it is known, is Literature. described under the head of Jains. Here it is sufficient to state that the oldest Jaina sūtras were in Ardhamāgadhī, while the non-canonical books of the Śvētāmbara sect were in a form of Māhārāṣṭri, and the canon of the Digambaras appears to have been in a form of Śaurasēnī. Besides these religious works, Prakrit also appears in secular literature. In artificial lyric poetry it is pre-eminent. ”

“ An important source of our knowledge of Prakrit, and especially of dialectic Prakrit, is the Sanskrit drama. It has already been pointed out that in works of this class many of the characters speak in Prakrit, different dialects being employed for different purposes. Generally speaking, Śaurasēnī is employed for prose and Māhārāṣṭri (the language of lyric poetry) for the songs, but special characters also speak special dialects according to their supposed nationality or profession. In India there is nothing extraordinary in such a polyglot medley. ”

“ Simplicity of plot, unity of episodes, and purity of language, unite in the formation of the Hindu dramas. Prose and verse, the serious and the comic, pantomime and music are intermingled in their representations. Only the principal characters, the gods, the Brahmins, and the kings, speak Sanskrit; women and the less important characters speak Prakrit, more or less refined according to their rank. Whatever may offend propriety, whatever may produce an unwholesome excitement, is excluded ”

“ Vocabulary.—In the article Indo-Aryan Languages it is explained that, allowing for phonetic development, the vocabulary of Śaurasēnī Prakrit was the same as that of Sanskrit, but that the farther we go from the Midland, the more examples we meet of a new class of words, the so-called dēśyas, descendants of the old Primary Prakrits spoken outside the Midland, and strange to Sanskrit. Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit, the most independent of the Outer languages, was distinguished by the large proportion of these dēśyas found in its vocabulary, and the same is consequently the case in Marathi. ”

“ The Eastern Prākrit now appears as Māgadhī, the dialect of Magadha, now Behar, and Ardha-Māgadhī (Half-Māgadhī) , with Benares as its centre. These mediæval Prākrits are important in connection with Sanskrit literature, as they are the vernaculars employed by the uneducated classes in the Sanskrit drama.
They are the sources of all the Aryan languages of modern India. From the Apabhraṃça are derived Sindhī, Western Panjābī, and Kashmīrī ”

“ Entirely in verse, it adopted and elaborated the Prākrit metrical forms, and carried them to a pitch of perfection too often overlooked by those who concern themselves rather with the substance than the form of the works they read. It covers a wide range of style, and expresses, in the works of its greatest masters, a rich variety of human feeling. Little studied by Europeans in the past, it deserves much more attention than it has received. ”

“ Thus, the Prakrit kannō becomes kān, an ear; Pr. bhikkhā becomes bhīk, alms; and Pr. puttō becomes pūt, a son. In the Piśāca (see Indo-Aryan Languages) and other languages of north-western India it is not usual to lengthen the vowel in compensation, and the same tendency is observable in Konkani, which, it may be remarked, appears to contain many relics of the old Prakrit (Saurāṣṭrī) spoken in the Gujarat country before the invasion from the Midland. Thus, in Konkani, we have put as well as pūt, while the word corresponding to the Pr. ekkō, one, is ek as well as the standard ēk. ”

“ Indian Pandits will not often waste their time on the vernaculars, and, if they do, are content to note such words as afford examples of any of the rules of Vararuchi or his successors, and to set down all words which cannot by the operation of these rules be at once transformed into Sanskrit as Deśaja. European scholars also have got no further than Prakrit, and seem to believe that the modern dialects are merely corruptions of Prakrit forms. ”

“ The distinction, however, is not one of sex really, but of rank, for Sanskrit is the language of gods, kings, princes, brahmans, ministers, chamberlains, dancing-masters and other men in superior positions and of a very few women of special religious importance, while Prakrit is spoken by men of an inferior class, like shopkeepers, law officers, aldermen, bathmen, fishermen and policemen, and by nearly all women. ”

“ In the formation of the plural the Prakrit declensions are very closely followed by Marathi. We shall confine our remarks to a-bases, which may be either weak or strong forms, and of which the feminine ends sometimes in ā, and sometimes in ī. In Prakrit the nom. plur. of these nouns ends masc. ā, fem. āō, īō, neut. āiṁ. We thus get the following:—
Several of the old synthetic cases have survived in Marathi, especially in the antique form of the language preserved in poetry. ”

“ In the article Prakrit attention is drawn to the frequent use of pleonastic suffixes, especially of - (a) ka- (masc. and neut.) , - (i) kā (fem.) . This could in Sanskrit be added to any noun, whatever the termination of the base might be. In Prakrit the k of this suffix, being medial, was elided, so that we get forms like Skr. nom. sing. masc. ”

“ General Character of the Language.—In the following account of the main features of Marathi, the reader is presumed to be familiar with the leading facts stated in the articles Indo-Aryan Languages and Prakrit. In the Prakrit stage of the Indo-Aryan languages we can divide the Prakrits into two well-defined groups, an Inner, Śaurasēnī and its connected dialects on the one hand, and an Outer, Māhārāṣṭrī, Ardhamāgadhī, and Māgadhī with their connected dialects on the other. ”

“ Similarly in Buddhist inscriptions pure Prākrit is relieved by the mixed dialect, the latter by Sanskrit. Thus in the inscriptions of Nāsik, in Western India, the mixed dialect extends into the third, while Sanskrit first begins in the second century A.D. From the sixth century onwards Sanskrit prevails exclusively (except among the Jains) in inscriptions, though Prākritisms often occur in them. Even in the literature of Buddhism the mixed dialect was gradually supplanted by Sanskrit. ”

“ The Prākrit of the Gobaṁ° agrees with this Old Māgadhī in having l for r and e in the nominative singular, but it reduces all [87] sibilants to s. It thus shows a certain similarity to the Ardha-Māgadhī of the grammarians, but that dialect often keeps r though it frequently alters it to l; for instance it has r for the kaleti of this Prākrit and the Old Māgadhī. Other points of similarity are the retention of the dental for cerebral in vanna; the lengthening of the vowel before the suffix ka (vannīkāhi) ; the accusative plural neuter in pupphā ”

“ His ability to handle elaborate Prākrit metres is undeniable; in 144 stanzas in the Karpūramañjarī he has 17 varieties. If poetry consisted merely of harmonious sound, he must be ranked high as a poet. He is fond of proverbs: varaṁ takkālovaṇadā tittirī ṇa uṇa diahantaridā morī, which gives our ‘A bird in hand is worth two in the bush’; he introduces freely words from vernaculars, including Marāthī. But, despite his parade of learning, he cannot distinguish accurately Çaurasenī and Māhārāṣṭrī in his drama ”

“ We find already in Bhāsa the formal distinction of introductory scenes into Viṣkambhakas of two kinds, according as Sanskrit alone or Sanskrit and Prākrit are used and Praveçakas; [111] in the former the number of interlocutors is three in two47 cases against one or two as usual later; there are other signs of his fondness for triads.48 The introduction normally is styled Sthāpanā,49 not as later Prastāvanā, and it is extremely simple ”

“ The hereditary system of caste has not only led Indian critics to assign minutely the proper characteristics of personages taken from different social grades, but has even left its mark on the language used by the dramatis personæ. Heroes and principal personages speak Sanskrit, while the women and inferior characters use the modifications of that language comprehended under the term Prákrit. ”

“ The marriage thus takes place with the approval of all those connected with the pair.
Equally from the Kathā literature, and in this case from a source known to us, the Bṛhatkathā of Guṇāḍhya, which, written in Paiçācī Prākrit has vanished, but is preserved in a version from Nepal and two from Kashmir, is the subject of the Pratijñāyaugandharāyaṇa,15 styled in the prologue a Prakaraṇa, which has four Acts and resembles in part that form of drama as recognized by the theory, though its hero is the minister of Udayana, the Vatsa king. ”

“ The most interesting of these is the Prakrit version found in the neighbourhood of Khotan, but fragments in Tokharian and Sanskrit have also been discovered. [Pg 215] All this literature probably represents the canon as it existed in the epoch of Kanishka and of the Gandharan sculptures, or at least the older stratum in that canon.
The newer stratum is composed of Mahâyânist sutras of which there is a great abundance, though no complete list has been published [526] . The popularity of the Prajñâ-pâramitâ, the Lotus and the Suvarṇa-prabhâsa is attested. ”

“ Māgadhī, on the contrary, [88] is required in the case of men who live in the women’s apartments, diggers of underground passages, keepers of drink shops, watchers, the hero himself in time of danger, and the Çakāra. Into which category the Duṣṭa falls is not certain; the Daçarūpa ascribes this Prākrit to low people in general.
Çaurasenī is ascribed to the hetaera by the Çāstra which gives Prācyā or eastern dialect to the Vidūṣaka, but it is clear that the Prācyā is a mere variety of Çaurasenī, from which it differs only in the use of certain expressions. ”

“ How then can matter or Prakriti be called eternal? If matter is merely a manifestation of spirit, why call it by the false name of matter instead of its own name spirit?‡ [14] Now having done with the effect, matter, we come to its cause, the Mula-Prakriti, which is also called Avidya or ignorance, the mother of Karma and the cause of Bundha. So long as this Prakriti is not layed into spirit by dissolving it into Satvaguna, there is no emancipation, Mukti with Prakriti is no Mukti at all. Beyond Prakriti is emancipation. This is the conclusion of the whole of our Aryan Occultism. ”

“ Prakriti is mechanical, but by being reflected in Purusha it assumes the appearance of consciousness in its activities, and thus there are created those phenomena of creation, conservation, dissolution, birth and life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, sense-knowledge and intellectual knowledge and ignorance, action and inaction, happiness and suffering which the Purusha under the influence of Prakriti attributes to itself although they belong not at all to itself but to the action or movement of Prakriti alone. ”

“ Royal 8vo, buckram, xxviii + 289 pages, price $1.50.
Here for the first time in the history of Indian philology we have the text of a Prākrit play presented to us in strictly correct Prākrit. Dr. Konow is a pupil of Professor Pischel of Berlin, whose Prākrit grammar has made his authority upon this subject of the very highest. The proofs have had the benefit of Professor Pischel's revision. The importance of the play is primarily linguistic rather than literary. ”

“ If there were only one Purusha, there would not be this central independence and separativeness, but all would see the world in an identical fashion and with a common subjectivity and objectivity. Because Prakriti is one, all witness the same world ; because her principles are everywhere the same, the general principles which constitute internal and external experience are the same for all ”

“ This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor non-Ego; and it is neither object nor subject. In the language of Hindn philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of Purusha and Prakriti. As the Adwaitees hold that an external object is merely the product of our mental state, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purush ia the only reality; it is the one existence which remains eternal in this universe of Ideals. ”

“ For Prakriti is constituted of three gunas or essential modes of energy; sattwa, the seed of intelligence, conserves the workings of energy; rajas, the seed of force and action, creates the workings of energy; tamas, the seed of inertia and non-intelligence, the denial of sattwa and rajas, dissolves what they create and and conserve. When these three powers of the energy of Prakriti are in a state of equilibrium, all is in rest, there is no movement, action or creation and there is therefore nothing to be reflected in the immutable luminous being of the conscious Soul. ”

“ This primâ facie view the Sûtra disposes of, by saying 'because (the work) denotes the world.' It is not the insignificant individual soul— which is under the influence of its good and evil works, and by erroneously imputing to itself the attributes of Prakriti becomes the cause of the effects of the latter—that is the topic of our text; but rather the Supreme Person who is free from all shadow of imperfection such as Nescience and the like, who is a treasure of all possible auspicious qualities in their highest degree of perfection, who is the sole cause of this entire world. ”

“ In our text the sloka 'from that the Lord of Mâyâ creates all this' gives instruction about the creation of the world. From that, i.e. from matter in its subtle causal state when it is not yet divided, the Lord of all creates the entire Universe. From this statement about creation we understand that Prakriti exists in a twofold state according as it is either cause or effect. During a pralaya it unites itself with Brahman and abides in its subtle state, without any distinction of names and forms; it then is called the 'Unevolved,' and by other similar names. ”