54 Or T LINES OF THE HISTORY OF SANSKRIT artificiality of style and language which is not absent from the best authors, and which in some is exaggerated beyond reason. The literary gap in the period immediately preceding arid succeeding the Christian era is due to the loss of the bulk of the pre-Kalidasan literature, since it is known that kdvya in all its forms was actively practised during all this time. The earliest Sanskrit inscriptions (e.g. of Rudradaman, a.i>. 150) show the existence of a developed Sanskrit Kavya. Patafijali (c. 150 b . c ,) quotes some kdvya fragments and mentions by name a poet Vararuci. His own work is a valuable example of the prose style of the period, and it enables us to form a picture of early Paninean Sanskrit at a time when it was still a fully living language. The works of Asvaghosa who flourished under Kaniska (a.d. 78 -f) preserved in Nepal (and fragmentarily in Central Asia), though long forgotten in India, have survived by fortunate chance, as the sole examples of Sanskrit Kavya literature in its earlier phase. The gap, only partially to be filled, between Panini and the classical literature, is responsible for certain changes in style and usage, which have affected the language of the latter, in spite of strict adherence to the rules of grammar. These changes comprise certain losses and also a number of innovations. Of the losses the most important was that of the old system of accentuation. This was still in full force in the time of Patanjali and it must have continued in being for some time after that, but by the time the bulk of the classical literature was composed it had certainly disappeared from ordinary use. Certain of Panini's grammatical forms though recognised were not in practice used. Already Patanjali remarks that forms of the second plural of the perfect like usa, ter a, cakra are no longer in use, their place being taken by the participial forms usitdh , tirndh, krtavantah . Later a good deal else was tacitly ignored. There are many constructions and idioms taught by Panini which are not recorded in the later literature (anvdje- or updje-kr ' to strengthen ’, nivacane-kr ' to be silent ', etc.), and many others which have obviously been employed by the later authors as evidence of their grammatical learning (e.g. in N aisadhacarita , darsayitahe, first person of the periphrastic future middle). There are losses in vocabulary and such words as anvavasarga- 4 allowing one his own way niravasila- ' excom- municated ' and abhresa- 'fitness, propriety 1 are no longer
