APABHRANgA 33
interesting notice that a man of taste would mingle his vernacular with Sanskrit, as is .the way with modern vernaculars, not with Apabhranca. The identification of the vernaculars and Apabhranca is given as the opinion of some authorities by the commentator of the Prakrta Pihgala, and other late authorities adopt this view. But the oldest authority who has been cited 1 for it is the Kashmirian Ksemendra (nth cent.), and it is extremely doubtful whether he meant anything of the sort when he refers to poems in vernacular ; it is as likely as not that in Kashmir, as probably in the case of Maharastra, Apabhranca was never a literary language, vernacular poems supervening directly on Prakrit poetry.
The first actual remnants of Apabhranca preserved occur in a citation in Anandavardhana, in the Devlgataka, and in Rudrata. By preserving r and r it is clear that these verses belong to the species of Prakrit styled by the eastern school of grammarians (Kramadlcvara, Markandeya, Rama Tarkavagica) Vracata, which also is styled the speech of the Abhiras. This tribe appears to have entered India some time before 150 B.C., when it is mentioned by Patanjali. Its early home was Sindhudeca, by which is meant 2 not Sindh but the Peshawar district of the ^Rawalpindi division, where they had as eastern neighbours the Gurjaras. 3 Later both tribes spread ; the Gurjaras are found as Gujars in the United Provinces ; in the main, however, they went south and occupied Gujarat. The Abhiras are recorded in the Mahabharata as in the Panjab, later they are heard of in Kuruksetra, and their descendants, the Ahirs, range as far east as Bihar ; some went south and settled on the coast to the west of Gujarat ; they won considerable fame, and an Abhira dynasty is stated in the Visnu Purana to have succeeded the Andhrabhrtyas. Both Abhiras and Gurjaras were probably of the Dardic branch of the Indian race, to judge at least from the strong Dardic
1 Jacobi, Bhavisatta Kaha, p. 69, corrected p. 214.
2 Jacobi, Festschrift Wackernagel, p. 124, n. 2 ; cf. Faghuvahca, xv. 87, 89. See Mahabhasya, i. 3. 72, v. 6.
3 See references in EHL pp. 427 ff. ; R. C. Majumdar, The Gurjara- Pratlharas (1923). The view of them as Khazars or Huns is unproved, and their earliest date unknown, but Alexander did not find them in the Panjab. Cf, Grierson, IA. xliii. 141 ff., 159 ff.
SHS
