mokshamargasya netaram bhettaram karmabhubhrtam
jñataram vishvatattvanam vande tadgunalabdhaye

Jaya Jinendra

HISTORY & DEVELOPMENT OF PRAKRIT LITERATURE (English)
By Prof. Jagdish Chandra Jain
Foreword by N.N. Bhattacharya
2004 220 x 145 mm 520 pp
81 7304 537 2 Hardcover Rs. 1095

Prof. Jagdish Chandra Jain is a great historian and an authority
in Prakrit language and literature.

There is clear evidence to show that Prakrit could not have
developed out of Sanskrit. The presence of Prakritisms in the
Vedas is indicative of the fact that spoken Prakrits existed in
the Vedic Age.

The first stage of Middle Indo-Aryan, 600 BCE to 200 CE,
consists of the Shauraseni Prakrit of the Ashokan inscriptions
and the Digambara works; the oldest of the Shvetambara
Ardhamagadhi canon and the Prakrit found in the Sanskrit
plays of Ashvaghosha.

The second stage of Middle Indo-Aryan, 200 CE to 600 CE,
comprises the Prakrit used in classical Sanskrit plays, Hala's
Gaha Sattasai, and Prakrit grammars in Shauraseni, Magadhi,
Ardhamagadhi and Maharashtri.

The third stage of Middle Indo-Aryan, 600 CE to 1000 CE,
saw the emergence of Apabhramsha.

1000 CE onwards, New Indo-Aryan came about, comprising
of modern Indian languages like Khadi Boli, Gujarati, Marathi,
Bengali, etc.

This work covers different aspects of Prakrit and its history. It
is a classic work because not only is it exhaustive but also very
well-researched and takes into account all the traditional views
of the ancient Prakrit grammarians which are compared with
modern findings on the subject.

Prof. Jain has demonstrated the similarity between Prakrit and
the Vedic language and presented convincingly his thesis that
Prakrit had its source in living people, not in the sacerdotal
tradition of the Vedic language. He has also underlined the
importance of the desi words that form the bulk of the Prakrit
lexicon and debunked the long-held theory that the substratum
of Prakrit lexicon consisted of popular and regional tadbhavas
of Sanskrit words.

Prof. Jain has also, in the course of his book, highlighted the
fact that Prakrit was not only the language of the Shramana
canon, but also contained epic poetry, lyrical poetry, gnomic
poetry, erotic poetry, didactic and narrative prose. Prakrit
writers exhibited narrative skills of the highest order.

In this book, Jain throws light on the large amount of Prakrit
works on grammar, prosody as well as on diverse subjects
such as astronomy, astrology, medicine, omen-divination, the
art of warfare, erotics, the taming & training of animals,
mining, music, gemmology and architecture.

The essays and papers in this book are arranged as under:

1. Evolution of the Prakrit Languages
2. Religious Literature in Prakrit : The Contribution of the Jain thinkers
3. The Canonical Literature of the Digambaras
4. Post-canonical Literature of the Shvetambaras
5. Poetic Composition in Prakrit
6. Narrative Literature in Maharashtri
7. Prakrit in Sanskrit Drama
8. Grammar, Prosody, Lexicography and Poetics
9. Secular Literature
10. A General Survey

|| parasparopagraho jivanam ||
Manish

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