Prakrit

The term Pracritus refers to a group of different languages spoken in ancient India. While Sanskrit was a learned language used by the bráhmanas (priests) in religious rituals (as formalizing Brahmanical Hinduism), Prakrit was the means by which heterodox beliefs such as Jainism (in Prakrit mahārāṣṭri) or Buddhism spread (in pāḷi). The modern Indo-Aryan languages seem to derive directly from these prácritas.

The Spanish word prácrito comes from the Sanskrit प्राकृत prākrita: 'original, natural, normal, ordinary, usual', which can be interpreted as indicating 'vernacular', in contrast to religious and literary Sanskrit.

The inscriptions of Emperor Aśoka (272-231 BC), written in the Brahmi syllabary, are all in a language very similar to Pāḷi, as Aśoka was the emperor who spread Buddhism throughout India. Aśoka issued his edicts in his capital, Pataliputra, which were translated into various Prakrit languages and disseminated by means of pillars throughout his kingdom.

Types of Prakrite

The main forms of Prakrite languages are classified by periods and regions are:

• Procrites of the ancient period:
  • Old transcript: the language of the Maurya empire and the inscriptions of Aśoka.
  • Pāii: the language of the Buddhist canon.
• Medieval literary writings:
  • Śauraseni: the closest to the classic Sanskrit.
  • Ardhamāgadhī: the language of the ancient Jainists.
  • Mahārā certiri: used in Sanskrit dramas; predecessor of the current Marathi.
• Medieval non-literary transcripts:
  • Māgadhī: an oriental writing; used by lower classes in dramas.
  • Jain-Śauraseni: the tongue of the canon dig ambara (the daggers are the jainist monks who do not wear clothes, while the sweta ambaras wearing white clothes).
  • Jain-Mahārā cederi: the language of non-canonical books sweta ambara.
• Apabhraśśa: the last stage of the transcript, characterized by an increase in the unsanscribed indo-ario element. It is a poetic language that reflects a late stage of the medium indo-ario, prior to the modern indo-ario (c. twelfth century AD). This language includes the great jainist works. In ancient times the term apabhramsa was used to refer to a language considered corrupt (apa bhramsa means in Sanskrit ‘to leave the right speech’. He had several dialects, as recognized by some authorities including the prosist Rudrata (c. 800).

We must also mention Hybrid Buddhist Sanskrit, which is a strongly Sanskritized type of Prakrit known to us from manuscripts from Central Asia from the 3rd to 5th centuries AD. c. Paishachi, a mysterious type of Prakrite, was considered at the time to be the language of the pishacha demons.

From all of the above it follows that the written Prakrit played a considerable role in three important fields:

• Religion: While the Sanskrit foretold Brahmanic Hinduism, the prácrite did the same with heterodox traditions, such as Buddhism and Jainism. The first in pali and the second in maharashtri and other forms (it is said that Mahavira, the founder of Yainism, predicted in ardha magadhi).
• State policies and matters: Asoka Edicts (sixteenth century B.C.) promulgated in their capital of Pataliputra were translated into several Arabic languages and placed on pillars throughout their kingdom.
• Literature: the transcripts had a very important socio-linguistic role in the Sanskrit dramas (Second century AD). While the gods, heroes, and kings are expressed in literary Sanskrit, the less exalted characters use forms of writing; for example, women speak in sauraseni but sing in maharastri. At the bottom of the social scale are those who speak Magadhi. It is something similar to the use of German bass by the servants in the operas of Hamburg of the eighteenth century.

Many of the present-day Neo-Indo-Aryan languages of India derive from the Prakrit languages.

Pracritus was a living language until the 12th century, although two centuries earlier it began to be absorbed by Middle Indian from which the current vernacular languages arose. It is difficult to specify the exact number of languages that today have that origin. Some 35 are those with the greatest diffusion, specifically Hindi, urdu, Bengali, gujarati, Punjabi, marathi, bijari, oriya and rajastani, each of which has more than ten million speakers.

Some scholars restrict the Prakrit languages to those used by Hindu and Jain writers, but others include Buddhist languages, such as Pali and Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit.

Further reading

• Wikisource in English contains the article of the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 on Prakrit.
• Pischel, R. Grammar of the Prakrit Languages. New York: Motilal Books, 1999.