PRAKRIT LANGUAGES, term applied to the vernacular (prakrta, natural) languages of India as opposed to the literary Sanskrit (saniskrta, purified). There were two main groups of ancient Indo-Aryan dialects, or Primary Prakrits; viz., the lan-. guage of the Midland or Ary5,varta, and that of what is called the Outer Band. The language of the Midland was crystallized in the shape of literary Sanskrit before 30o B.C. Beside it, all the Primary Prakrits continued to develop under the usual laws of phonetics, and, as vernaculars. reached a secondary stage marked by a tendency to simplify harsh combinations of consonants and the broader diphthongs, the synthetic processes of declension and conjugation remaining as a whole unaltered. Although the literary dialect of the Midland became fixed, the vernacular of the same tract continued to develop along with the other Primary Prakrits, but owing to the existence of a literary standard by its side its development was to a certain extent retarded.
The Secondary Prakrits, in their turn, received literary culture. In their earliest stage one of them became the sacred language of Buddhism, under the name of Pali (q.v.). In a still later stage several Secondary Prakrits became generally employed for a new literature, both sacred and profane. Three of them were used for the propagation of the Jaina religion (see JAINs), and they were also vehicles for independent secular works, and largely employed in the Indian drama, in which Brahmans, heroes and people of high rank spoke in Sanskrit, while the other characters expressed themselves in some Secondary Prakrit according to nationality or profession. This later stage of the Secondary Prakrits is known as the Prakrit par excellence. In its turn it was fixed by grammarians, and as a literary language ceased to grow, while as a vernacular it went on in its own course. This further development was looked upon as corruption, and its result hence received the name of Apabltraiitia. Again in their turn the Apabhraiits'as received literary cultivation and a stereotyped form, while as vernaculars they went on into the stage of the Tertiary Prakrits and become the modern Indo-Aryan languages.
In the Prakrit stage of the Secondary Prakrits we see as before —a Midland language, and the dialects, of the Outer Band. The Prakrit of the Midland was known as Sauraseni, from Surasena, the name of the country round Mathura (Muttra). It was the
language of the territories having the Gangetic Doab for their centre. To the west it probably extended as far as the modern Lahore and to the east as far as the confluence of the Jumna and the Ganges. Conquests carried the language to Rajputana and Gujarat. The development of Sauraseni was retarded by the influence of its great neighbour Sanskrit. Moreover, both being sprung from the same original—the Primary Prakrit of the Mid land—its vocabulary, making allowances for phonetic changes, is the same as in that language.
The Prakrits of the Outer Band, all more closely connected with each other than any one of them was to Sauraseni, were Magadhi, Ardhamagadhi, Maharastri, and an unknown Prakrit of the North-west. Magadhi was spoken in the eastern half of the Gangetic plain. Its proper home was Magadha, the modern South Bihar, but it extended far beyond these limits at very early times. Judging from the modern vernaculars, its western limit must have been about the longitude of the city of Benares. Between it and Sauraseni (i.e., in the modern Oudh and the country to its south) lay Ardhamagadhimi "half Magadhi." Maharastri was the language of Maharastra, the great kingdom extending south wards from the river Nerbudda to the Kistna and sometimes in cluding the southern part of the modern Bombay Presidency and Hyderabad. Its language therefore lay south of Sauraseni. West of Sauraseni, in the Western Punjab, there must have been another Prakrit of which we have no record, although we know a little about its later Apabhralitia form. Here there were also speakers of Dardic (see INDO-ARYAN LANGUAGES), and the local Prakrit, to judge from the modern Tertiary vernacular, was a mixed form of speech. We have a detailed description of only one Apabhraiitia—the Nagara—the Apabhraiiis'a of the aura sent spoken in the neighbourhood of Gujarat, and therefore some what mixed with Maharastri. We may, however, conclude that there was an Apabhraiii.fa corresponding to each Prakrit, so that we have, in addition to Saurasena, a Magadha, an Ardhamagadha and a Maharastra Apabhraiiila. Native writers describe more than one local Apabhraiiiia, such as Vracada, the ancient dialect of Sind. There were numerous Prakrit subdialects to which it is not necessary to refer. These Apabhraiidas are the direct parents of the modern vernacular.