52 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF SANSKRIT special or cultivated audience, but intended for public recital to the population in general Their popular character is evidenced by their language. This is Sanskrit definitely enough as opposed to the contemporary Middle Indo-Aryan, but it is a Sanskrit which frequently violates the rules which Panini had laid down and which were always observed in the more orthodox literary circles. Among the common deviations of the Epic language a few characteristic types may be quoted. The dis- tinction between the active and middle forms of the verb, which was still fully alive in Panini's time, and for which he caters in some detail, is beginning to be blurred in the Epic. Active forms are used for middle and vice-versa, and even the passive verb sometimes takes active endings (sruyanti ' are heard etc.). There is some confusion between the gerunds in -tvd and -ya, and the rule of Panini which restricts the former to uncompounded and the latter to compounded verbs is not always observed. Unaugmented preterites occur, a character- istic which is also found in the Veda, as well as in early middle Indo- Aryan. Conversely the augmented forms are occasionally found with the prohibitive particle (ntd . . . agamah 1 do not go '). The particle md is not used exclusively with the unaug- mented aorist according to rule but indifferently with impera- tive (md bhava) optative (md bruydh) future (md draksyasi) and so on. The tenth class and causative verbs make a middle parti- ciple in -aydna (< codaydna - as opposed to correct codayamana-) a usage to which metrical convenience has contributed. The care- ful rules of Panini concerning the use of the alternative forms -atl and - anti in forming the feminine of present participles are not strictly observed. The distribution of set and an it forms fre- quently does not conform to rule. These and other irregular forms correspond to what is found in early middle lndo-Aryan, indicating that Epic Sanskrit is a later form of Sanskrit than that of Panini. No pre-Paninean forms are found in the Epic, which means that although the epic tradition goes back to the Vedic period, and although the Mahabharata story was familiar to people before Panini's time, even the earliest portions of the present text must be distinctly later than him. Since for centuries the transmission of the epic stories depended on oral tradition, and not a fixed oral tradition like that of the Vedic schools, it is not surprising that a circle of stories originating in the Vedic period should in their final form
