12 SANSKRIT, PRAKRIT, AND APABHRAN^A
unintelligible in early times at least to the audience, which might be one including persons of quite humble rank ; the Natyagastra expressly lays it down that the Sanskrit is to be such as is easify intelligible to every one. The denial that realism was ever aimed at in the use of language by the characters in the drama is negatived by the facts ; the Prakrits used by the dramatists show a steady advance from those of Acvaghosa through those of Bhasa to the dialects of Kalidasa, who introduced to the stage the Maharastrl which, earlier unimportant, had won fame in India as the medium of erotic lyric. 1 The evidence of Acvaghosa is of special value, for it attests the fact that about A. D. ioo the stage tradition was so firmly in favour of the use of Sanskrit by the persons of the highest rank that he adopted it in his plays despite their Buddhist theme, and despite the fact that the Buddha himself, according to tradition, had forbidden the employment of Sanskrit as the medium for preserving his sayings. 2
The extent to which Sanskrit was used or understood is further attested by the epics. It is perhaps hardly necessary now to do more than mention the implausible conjecture 3 which ascribes the writing of the epics in Sanskrit to some period after the Christian era and sees in them translations from some Prakrit. The silence of antiquity on this vast undertaking is inexplicable, and it is incredible that the translation should have taken place at a period when Buddhism was triumphant and Brahminism comparatively depressed. The language itself has a distinctive character which renders the idea of translation absurd ; * we have in Buddhist literature of the so-called Gatha type abundant evidence of the results produced by efforts to Sanskritize, and the arguments which are adduced to establish the reality of translation would suffice to prove that Vedic texts were likewise translations. Moreover, there is conclusive evidence that Panini 6 knew a Mahabharata or at least a Bharatan epic in Sanskrit, and that the bulk of the Ramayana* was composed
1 Keith, Sanskrit Drama^pp. 72 ff., 85 ff, ia,i f., 140, 155.
2 Cullavagga, v. 33. 1 ; Keith, IHQ. i. 501.
8 Grierson, IA. xxiii. 52 ; Barth, RHR. xxvii. 288.
- Jacobi, Ramayana, p. 117 ; ZDMG. xlviii. 407 ff. ; Keith, JRAS. 1 906, pp. 2 ff.
Hopkins, Great Epic, p. 385. « Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 318 ff.
