NOTES

CHAPTER 1. PRAKRIT IN THE LANGUAGE ORDER OF INDIA

1. Foucault 1994 [1966]: xxiv.

2. Mīrzā Khān, Gift from India (1936 [1676]), 53: bebāyad dānist ki zabān-i ahl-i hind mutaʿaddid ast. ammā ānchi badān kitābhā o dīvānhā taṣnīf tuwān kard, o mat̤būʿ-i t̤abʿ-i salīm o ẕihn-i mustaqīm bāshad, bar sih gūnah ast. M. Ziauddin’s English translation is on p. 34. See also Keshavmurthy 2013.

3. See Pollock 2011: 29 and 2006a: 8.–105.

4. “More or less” because the third position, the vernacular, was often filled by a language called Apabhramsha, which many people did in fact think of as a vernacular.

5. Mīrzā Khān, Gift from India, 5.–54: duyum parākirt... o madḥ-i mulūk o wuzarāʿ o akābir beshtar badīn zabān goyand. o ān zabān-i ʿālam ast, yaʿni ʿālam-i ki zīr zamīn ast. o ān-rā pātāl-bānī goyand... o nāg-bānī nīz nāmand... yaʿnī zabān-i ahl-i asfal us-sāfilīn o mārān ki zamīnīyān o suflīyānand. o ān murakkab ast az sahãskirt, ki sābiq maẕkūr shud, o bhākhā, ki baʿd az īn maẕkūr shawad. The translation here is based on Ziauddin’s.

6. See the end of chapter 7.

7. Foucault 1994 [1966]: xv.

8. Quoted in Crowley 1996: 39.

9. There are a few reliable guides: von Hinüber 2001 and two works by Jagdishchandra Jain (1961, in Hindi; 2004, in English).

10. Saussure 2011 [1959]: 20–23.

11. Linguistic areas are spaces in which genetically unrelated languages share grammatical features; see Emeneau 1956.

12. Mirror of Literature 1.32; see the discussion in chapter 5.

13. Kaviraj 1992; Pollock 2003, 2006a.

14. Social science has naturalized these categories to the extent that they are used constantly and promiscuously in Indological scholarship, often without recognition of or attention to the domains and problems through which they were theorized in the first place (thus it has become common to speak of Sanskrit language practices “legitimating” political power without reference to Weber, or of Sanskrit language practices serving the purposes of “distinction” without reference to Bourdieu).

15. For language ideology, see Woolard 1994; for philology as a corrective to social theory, see Pollock 2006a: 49.–524.

16. Foucault 2009 [1961]: xxviii; Sakai 1992: 4–5; Sakai 2009: 77. For the regimentation of discursive practices in classical India, see Pollock 1989.

17. Pollock 1996, 2006a: 3.–280.

18. Gadamer 2004 [1960]: 287–288. The original reads “eine ausgezeichnete Weise des Geschichtlichseins selbst, den geschichtlichen Vorzug der Bewahrung, die—in immer erneuerter Bewährung—ein Wahres sein läßt” (Gadamer 2010 [1960]: 292).

19. Necklace of Sarasvatī 2.17, the second example (p. 144) = Recognition of Śakuntalā 3.13.

20. Seven Centuries, and the difficult problem of its date and authorship, is discussed in chapter 3.

21. W175 in Seven Centuries (unless otherwise noted I cite verses from Weber’s edition of the text and using his numeration); Light on Suggestion, p. 16 (Kāvyamālā ed.); see Ingalls, Masson, and Patwardhan 1990: 83, whose translation I cannot improve upon. For Ānandavardhana’s “revolution” see McCrea 2008.

22. See Abhinavagupta’s commentary on Ānandavardhana’s Light on Suggestion, pp. 84, 90–92 in the Ingalls, Masson and Patwardhan translation; the Explanation of the Suggestion Verses by Ratnākara, who reproduces Abhinavagupta’s notes (as noted by Masson and Patwardhan 1974); Dundas 1985: 17. Bhoja’s discussion of the verse seems to show no awareness of the controversy generated by Ānandavardhana’s Light.

23. Although the use of Prakrit in these domains still stands in need of explanation, it is notable that they are the same domains in which vernacular texts would later appear; see Pollock 2011: 29; Jain 2004: 425–478; Bhattacharyya 1947; Chintamani 1971.

24. For general introductions to Jainism, see von Glasenapp 1999; Jaini 1979; Dundas 2002 [1992].

25. See, e.g., Cox 2006 and Hopkins 2002. For Jain literature in Prakrit, consult Chaudhari 1973.

26. Bhoja (eleventh century), Illumination of the Erotic, p. 398: sāhityasya sarvapārṣadatvāt (Pollock 2006a: 430 n. 103); Bhoja is adapting Rājaśekhara (tenth century), Analysis of Literature, p. 38: sarvapārṣadatvāt kāvyavidyāyāḥ.

27. Message Poem, vv. 3 (micchadeso), 4 (kulakamalo pāiyakavvesu). I am aware of the real possibility of anachronism in using the word “Hindu” (e.g., Hawley 1991; Lorenzen 1995), but I use it to refer to a variety of systems of belief and practice (Shaivism, Vaishnavism, “Vedic” and “Puranic” Hinduism) that acknowledge, however nominally, the authority of the Vedas.

28. Bāṇabhaṭṭa (seventh century) calls Seven Centuries an “inexhaustible treasury” (Deeds of Harṣa, v. 12).

29. A verse in praise of Yaśovarman of Ankor (ca. 900 ce) refers to a Prakrit court epic by Pravarasena (Barth 1885: 254[434]e, LVII B v. 7): yena pravarasenena dharmasetuṃ vivṛṇvatā (ed. vivṛṇvata) | paraḥ pravaraseno ‘pi jitaḥ prākṛtasetukṛt ||: “He, called Pravarasena because of his excellent army, produced a Bridge of Dharma, and thereby conquered that other Pravarasena who merely produced a common bridge” (with a pun on both pravarasena- and prākṛtasetu-, both “a common bridge” and “the Bridge in Prakrit.” Prakrit in Java is discussed in chapter 6.

30. See the discussion in chapter 3.

31. See chapter 7.

32. On “homeless texts” see Tavakoli-Targhi 2001: 8–15. Contrast the case of Sanskrit today: to combat what they see as a nefarious neocolonialist ideology in mainstream scholarship, some right-wing Hindus have sought to claim “ownership” (adhikāra) of Sanskrit, by which they mean the exclusive right to make claims about its history.

33. The more successful examples are Syādvāda Mahāvidyālaya in Benares, founded in 1905, and the National Institute for Prakrit Studies and Research in Śravaṇabeḷagoḷa, founded in 1991. Thanks to John Cort for discussing these institutions with me.

34. Hoernle 1880a: 313, a useful summary of the history of scholarship on Prakrit up to that date. The emphasis is mine.

35. Lassen 1837: 7.

36. Both Goldschmidt’s and Weber’s editions were accompanied by several ancillary studies (Goldschmidt 1873, 1874, 1875, 1878, 1879, 1881, 1883a, 188.b, 1885; Weber 1870, 1874, 1883).

37. Pischel 1874, 1879, 1981 [1900].

38. In the text just below, I refer to Jacobi 1886 (to which Jacobi 1908–1909 is related). Jacobi’s editions of Jain texts include Jacobi 1879 and 1884; his Kleine Schriften were edited by Bernhard Kölver in 1970.

39. For important collections of their papers, see Upadhye Papers (Mysore, 1983) and Bhayani’s Indological Studies (Ahmebad, 1993 and 1998).

40. Jacobi 1886: §1; it is updated by Masica 1991: 50–55.

41. See Salomon 1995: 301: “The basic assumption is that there is and always ways an absolute dichotomy between ‘Sanskrit’ and ‘Prakrit’ or, in modern terms, of OIA [Old Indo-Aryan, AO] versus Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA).” This assumption is made, e.g., by Sankunni Nair (1995: 71–89).

42. Pollock 2006a: 61, citing Renou 1956: 84.

43. The term “simultaneous order” is T. S. Eliot’s (1982: 37). For the languages of the Kuvalayamālā, see Upadhye 1963–1964.

44. So Katre 1964: 2–3.

45. For Émile Senart’s “Monumental Prakrit” and “Sinhalese Prakrit,” see Salomon 1998: 76–77 and 151. “Leṇa Prakrit” refers to the language of the rock-cut caves or leṇas (Sanskrit layana-) in the usage of Richard Pischel (1981 [1900]: §7). “Stūpa Dialect” was proposed by Heinrich Lüders (1911: 62). For the relationship between Prakrit and “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit” see Edgerton 1936. On “Niya Prakrit” see Burrow (1935–1937). Sankunni Nair (1995: 72) suggests that the Cullavagga of the Pali canon uses the terms “Sanskrit” and “Prakrit,” but this is incorrect; his reference is rather to the well-known sakāya niruttiya passage, for which see Brough 1980 and Levman 2008–2009.

46. Pischel 1981 [1900]: §§1–2; von Hinüber 2001: §1. One of Pischel’s favorite quotations comes from Pṛthvīdhara’s commentary on Little Clay Cart (p. 1): mahārāṣṭryādayaḥ kāvya eva prayujyante “Mahārāṣṭrī and the other Prakrit languages are only used in poetry” (see Pischel 1873: 397). Pṛthvīdhara, however, did not mean what Pischel apparently thought he meant. Kāvye, I believe, is in contrast to nāṭake; Mahārāṣṭrī is not used in theater (and therefore not used in Little Clay Cart), because it is used exclusively in “literature heard” (śravyakāvya), that is, literature meant to be read or recited rather than performed onstage. (Pṛthvīdhara seems to be right when it comes to earlier plays, but wrong about the later plays.)

47. With one exception: the saṭṭaka, or Prakrit play, although this genre could easily be considered a dramatization of existing Prakrit genres of lyric poetry and song. For more on this genre, see chapter 7.

48. For the idea that theatrical languages are considered Prakrit secondarily, see the discussion of Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Literature in chapter 5.

49. Daṇḍin, Mirror of Literature 1.34: mahārāṣṭrāśrayāṃ bhāṣāṃ prakṛṣṭaṃ prākṛtaṃ viduḥ | sāgaraḥ sūktaratnānāṃ setubandhādi yanmayam ||. The spelling Māhārāṣṭrī is a scholarly convention inaugurated by Jacobi (1886); see Abhyankar 1955 for the historically more accurate spelling “Mahārāṣṭrī”.

50. This periodization is explicitly ventured by George Grierson (1927: 122): “It may be taken as a convenient date for fixing the memory, that these Prakrits were dead languages by, in round numbers, 1000 A.D.”

51. Seven Centuries, W2; Taraṅgalolā, v. 13 (there is a metrical problem here and I propose to read pāaavayaṇanibaddhaṃ or something like it instead of pāyayaṭṭhaṃ ca nibaïṃ); Līlāvaī, v. 43; Kuvalayamālā, p. 4 l. 11; Vajjālagga, gāhāvajjā (vv. 9–18).

52. Brilliance of the Connoisseurs, v. 5: siṃgāra-bhāva-suhaā sarasā varasuṃdari vva somālī | koḍḍa-maṇoraha-jaṇaṇī haraï maṇaṃ pāauttī hu ||.

53. See chapter 5. The only case that I know of in which the word “Prakrit” is used to refer to Buddhist scripture is in the Spitzer manuscript (Franco 2004); for its use in reference to Jain scripture, see the “three myths” discussed in chapter 3.

54. Deleuze and Guattari 1986: 26.

55. See chapter 5.

56. The historical framework is Sheldon Pollock’s (1996, 1998, 2006a).

57. For reviews of the “origins of kāvya“question, see Pollock 2006a: 77ff., focusing on an ethnohistorical moment of invention in Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa and a (later) process of “desacralization” of Sanskrit under the Śaka rulers of Gujarat; Jamison 2004, focusing on the continuities between kāvya and the Ṛg Veda (she acknowledges the “Middle Indic” origins of kāvya, however, on pp. 145–147); Boccali 1999 and Rossella 2011, focusing on the Songs of the Buddhist Monks and Nuns in Pali.

58. Garrez 1872.

59. Javanese stands somewhat apart, although it is closer to this first group than the second. Tamil and Malayalam form a group somewhat apart because of their reliance on an independent grammatical tradition in Tamil. For more on these two groups, see chapter 6.

60. I am thinking of the critique of Rousseau and Saussure in Derrida 1997 [1976].

61. Tambling 1988.

62. Although Prakrit is very often conflated with vernacular speech, both in premodernity (see the verse of Haribhadra discussed in chapter 3) and by modern scholars (e.g., Granoff 1989b: 330).

63. As people did to protest compulsory Hindi education in Tamil Nadu (Ramaswamy 1997: 1) or demand the formation of a state for Telugu-speaking regions (Mitchell 2009: 1).

64. There are exceptions: Viśvanātha, the seventeenth-century scribe of the Moonlight of the Essence of the Bridge (Setutattvacandrikā), a synthetic commentary on Rāvaṇa’s Demise, was clearly well acquainted with Prakrit. In the Jaisalmer collections there are several old manuscripts that were revised and corrected by scholars such as Pradyumna Sūri (mid-thirteenth century) who were similarly well acquainted with Prakrit. But I can attest that these are exceptions.

65. Ghanaśyāma, River of Amazement: “Some self-styled scholars have made the mistake of reading the Prakrit phrase viddhasālabhajjiā instead of viddhasālabhaṃjiā on account of their belief that the circle on top of the letter bha, which usually represents nasalization, is a scribal mistake in some of the manuscripts for a circle to the side of the letter, which represents the doubling of the following consonant, and understanding this phrase as ‘the wife and the brother-in-law that has been beat up’ [viddha-syāla-bhāryā, the middle word now being a mild vulgarity in most Indian languages—AO], they claim that it is out of character with the poet, with the sentiment of the play, and with what actually happens in the play, as well as indecent. But they have wasted their time with this debate, since their theory is contradicted by Vicakṣaṇā’s line in the third act, in which she says ‘a statue (śālabhañjikā) was created in imitation of her,’ and hence the title of the play is Viddhasālabhaṃjiā, ‘The Pierced Statue’” (kvacit pustaka-prasūtyantareṣu lekhaka-hasta-doṣa-vaśād akṣara-mastaka-pārśvānusvāra-dvitva-vyañjaka-bindu-viśvāsena viddha-sāla-[bhajji]ā iti prākṛta-bhāṣā-pāṭham āśaṃkya viddha-syāla-bharyeti kavi-bhāva-nāṭikārtha-viruddham asaṃgataṃ ca vadanti paṇḍita[ṃ]manyāḥ kecid. bhrānta-pratiyoginas tu tucchāḥ, tṛtīyāṅka-praveśake “tadaṇuvādiṇī sālabhaṃjīā ṇimmāvidā” iti vicakṣaṇā-vākya-virodhād iti dik. tathā ca viddha-sālabhaṃjieti nāma yasyāḥ). The commentary is ascribed to Ghanaśyāma’s wives Sundarī and Kamalā, but I believe that Ghanaśyāma ghost-wrote it, or that his wives somehow learned how to uncannily replicate their husband’s pretentious style.

66. Bloch 1893 and the critical review of Konow 1894, which refers to Hoernle 1873: 210; Pischel 1981 [1900]: §22; Hillebrandt 1984 [1912].

67. There is some slight evidence that Bhāsa was also a Prakrit poet; see Krishna Moorthy 1946.

68. Printz 1921. See A. N. Upadhye’s n. 35 in the introduction to Kaṃsa’s Demise and the work of Anna Aurelia Esposito (2004, 2008, 2010a, 201.b).

69. Von Hinüber 2001: §59: “zwischen den Handschriften und den Grammatikern einen gangbaren Mittelweg zu suchen.” See also Steiner 1997: 157–208 and 2001, echoing Hoernle 1873: 210.

70. See Mārkaṇḍeya’s Sum-Total of Prakrit 3.77 and Konow 2007 [1901]: 202; on the latter, see Ghosh’s edition (the avowed purpose of which is to correct Konow’s unwarranted interventions in the text) and Salomon 1982; Mirror of Literature 6.158cd–159: “Men who are not low, whose souls are purified [saṃskṛta], speak Sanskrit; women of that status should use Śaurasenī, but they should use Mahārāṣṭrī in verses” (puruṣāṇām anīcānāṃ saṃskṛtaṃ saṃskṛtātmanām | śaurasenī prayoktavyā tādṛśīnāṃ ca yoṣitām | āsām eva tu gāthāsu mahārāṣṭrīṃ prayojayet |). See chapter 5 regarding Rājaśekhara’s fourfold model of language.

71. And this was the view of the first generation of European scholars to read Prakrit: “Volkssprache” (Westergaard 1862: 86); “volkstümliche Charakter” (Weber 1870: 14).

72. Grierson 1927: 123.

73. Ibid., 121. Grierson’s “Aryan” is what anglophone linguists after World War II called “Indo-Aryan”; I follow the lead of Hermann Jacobi in calling this language-family “Indic.”

74. Ghatage 2000 [1936]: 105. Ghatage is echoing the idea of “literarische Ausbildung” that was earlier formulated by, e.g., in Bloch 1893: 12.

75. Lacôte 1908: 42: “Ainsi, les prâkrits, au sens étroit que donnent les grammairiens à ce terme, n’ont pas de réalité linguistique, ou, plus exactement, il n’en ont qu’une indirecte.” The chapter in which Lacôte writes this is titled “Caractère artificiel des prâkrits.”

76. Besides Bloch 1970 [1914]: 15, see Konow 1894: 473: “Das litteräre Prakrit ist meiner Ueberzeugung nach nie eine lebendige Sprache gewesen” (in my opinion literary Prakrit has never been a living language). And see too Konow 2007 [1901]: 191.

77. Kuvalayamālā §246 (pp. 152–153); see also Master 1950; Upadhye 1963–1964; Chojnacki 2008a: 44.–450.

78. Pischel 1900: §6; my translation differs slightly from Jha’s (Pischel 1981 [1900]).

79. On Pali, see von Hinüber 1982; on Ardhamāgadhī, see Jacobi 1884. Pischel developed the idea of artificiality in conversation with other scholars in an early review (1873).

80. Schleicher quoted in Crowley 1996: 11. One can also compare the titular metaphor of The Life of Language by William Dwight Whitney, a Sanskrit scholar who was instrumental in the establishment of linguistics as a discipline independent from philology.

81. “It is generally assumed that dramatic Prākrits do not represent the actual speech of the people they are supposed to typify. Nevertheless, they are based upon it and they remain for us pieces of valuable evidence regarding phonology, morphology and syntax of Middle Aryan dialects. This value diminishes with time” (Bubenik 1996: 15). Along the same lines, see Bloch 1970 [1914] and 1965 [1934].

82. Kloss 1967: 39.

83. Deshpande 1993.

CHAPTER 2. INVENTING PRAKRIT: THE LANGUAGES OF POWER

1. “That man should speak at all is nature’s act, / but how you speak—in this tongue or in that— / she leaves to you and to your preference” (https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/paradiso/paradiso-26).

2. See Pollock 2006.

3. Dante, On Vernacular Eloquence 17.2 (Botterill 1996).

4. The parallel between the Sātavāhanas and the Kuṣāṇas (but not the literary cultures over which they presided) was explored by Lévi 1936; see Ollett 2017 for further reflections.

5. The chronology of the Sātavāhana dynasty was a lively topic of Indological discussion starting with Pargiter 1913 and lasting into the 1970s. Almost all of this scholarship is based on Ussherian tabulations of the purāṇas and, toward the end of this period, on extremely creative construals of the epigraphic evidence. The abundant numismatic evidence led to no convincing chronology until Shailendra Bhandare’s dissertation (1999).

6. The numismatic evidence analyzed by Bhandare (1999, 2006, 2011) and Joe Cribb (1998, 2000) largely corroborates the chronology that Dehejia 1972 derived from inscriptional paleography and formal comparison of architectural elements. Shastri 1999 more or less concurs with these results.

7. In appendix B, the inscriptions have been given serial numbers, cited in these notes in square brackets, e.g., [1] refers to “Kanaganahalli inscription of the time of Vāsiṣṭhīputra Śrī Chimuka Sātavāhana, year 16.”

8. [6] and [7].

9. On the dakṣiṇāpatha, see Neelis 2011: 205–226. On political and economic integration and urbanization during the Sātavāhana period, see Ray 1986, Morrison 1995, Sinopoli 2001, Parabrahma Sastry 2008, and Skinner 2012.

10. This title is applied to an unknown king (probably Śrī Sātakarṇi) at Nāṇeghāṭ [6], to Gautamīputra Śrī Sātakarṇi at Sannati [11], to Vāsiṣṭhīputra Śrī Puḷumāvi at Nāsik [18], and to Śrī Sātakarṇi (probably Vāsiṣṭhīputra Śrī Sātakarṇi) in the Junāgaṛh inscription [104]. It supplies the title to Gokhale 2008, Lord of Dakṣiṇāpatha, a collection of essays on the Sātavāhanas.

11. General treatments of rock-cut architecture include Dehejia 1972 and Nagaraju 1981; see also Rees 2011.

12. See Bakker 2007: 21; the image gallery of the Kuṣāṇa rulers at Māṭ, near Mathurā, is a later example (see Lüders 1961: 131–147), as is the one at Surkh Kotal (Fussman 1989); on these see also Rosenfield 1967. For the representation of the Sātavāhanas at Kanaganahalli, see below in the text.

13. “Poetry of politics”: Pollock 1996: 198.

14. The donations to the priests are called dakhinā (dakṣiṇā), and those to the spectators are called pasapaka (prāsarpaka).

15. The first legible invocation (line 1) reads namo dhaṃmasa; something has been lost prior to this. See Minkowski 2008 for the introductory verses of literary texts, with which the invocations of inscriptions (commonly sidhaṃ in this period) bear some relation, as yet undetermined. For the Vedic and post-Vedic connotations of dharma, see Olivelle 2004: 82.

16. See, e.g., Āpastambaśrautasūtra 21.5.10 and 21.8.7 and Baudhāyanaśrautasūtra 8.5.

17. For a good bibliographic introduction to the enormous scholarly literature on Aśoka’s inscriptions, see Falk 2006.

18. See the Compendium of the Essence of Figures in Literature 1.3 of Udbhaṭa for the definition of chekānuprāsa.

19. Caritabrahmacariyāya could also refer to her study of the Vedas. Bühler (followed by Sircar and Mirashi) inserted word breaks to read yañā hutā dhūpanasugaṃdhā, but the following letter ya guarantees that this is another long compound describing Nāganikā (so also Gokhale 2004–2006: 250); see the bibliography for [6]. See the Ornament of Literature of Bhāmaha 2.8 and Udbhaṭa’s Compendium 1.8–10 for lāṭānuprāsa. Some of the more interesting controversies surrounding the interpretation of this inscription have involved the eligibility of women to perform śrauta sacrifices; see Sankaranarayanan 1999.

20. Daṇḍin calls power (ojas) the “essence of literary prose” (gadyasya jīvitam) in his Mirror of Literature 1.80. Treatise on Theater 16.105 reads: samāsavadbhir bahubhir vicitraiś ca padair yutam | sānurāgair udāraiś ca tad ojaḥ parikīrtyate ||. I follow Abhinavagupta’s insightful commentary in my interpretation of this verse. I follow Amarasiṃha (ojo dīptau bale, 3.3.234) in translating ojas as “power,” where a more conventional translation might be “vigor”; the word is cognate with the word “august.”

21. Tieken 2006; see chapter 4.

22. The term apratihatacakra- was used by Khāravela, across the Deccan in Odisha, within a generation of the Nāṇeghāṭ inscription. It was also used by Indo-Parthian ruler Gondophares, of the middle of the first century BCE, and the Kṣatrapa Rājūvula of Mathurā, in the early first century CE (Rosenfield 1967: 152). It is probably referenced in the epithet apatihatasaṃkapa- “whose resolve to sacrifice was never impeded,” of the Ikṣvāku rulers of Nāgārjunakoṇḍa (late third century CE).

23. As noted by Jacobi (1886: §13), who makes what I consider a faulty historical inference about this difference (see below in the text).

24. The term “linguistic volume” is Gramsci’s (Lo Piparo 2010: 27).

25. The reading and translation are from Nakanishi and von Hinüber 2014; see [25] for the other label inscriptions. See Fynes 1995 on the religious patronage of the Sātavāhanas. Zin 2013 wonders why rulers who were not themselves Buddhists were so prominently depicted in the Buddhist art of Kanaganahalli. For the phrase mahācaitya applied to the stūpa at Kanaganahalli, see Skilling 2016.

26. The inscriptions of Hāthībāḍā and Ghosuṇḍī in the early first century BCE speak of the construction of a structure for worship of Saṃkarṣaṇa and Vāsudeva; see Salomon 1998: 87.

27. Tieken 2008: 371 n. 82. Compare the surprise of Ācārya (1982: 27) at Gautamī Balaśrī’s eulogy of her son at Nāsik: yah sacmuc āścarya kī bāt hai ki svayaṃ ko ‘ek brahmaṇa’ aur ‘khatiyadapamānamadana’ kahne vāle tathā vaidik evaṃ bhāgavatdharm kā punaruddhār karne vāle sātavāhan nareśoṃ ne prākṛt ko rājbhāṣā kā gaurav pradhān kiyā (“It is really a matter of surprise that the Sātavāhana kings, who called themselves ‘unique Brāhmaṇas’ and ‘destroyers of the pride and arrogance of the Kṣatriyas’ and oversaw a resurgence of Vedic and Bhāgavata religion, made Prakrit into the major language of state”).

28. See Pollock 2006a: 3.–50; see also the Vedic prohibition on writing in Aitareya Āraṇyaka 5.3.3, “he should not learn when he has eaten flesh, or seen blood, or a dead body, or done what is unlawful, or anointed (his eyes) or oiled or rubbed his body, or had himself shaved, or bathed, or has put on colour, or put on a wreath, or had intercourse, or written, or obliterated writing” (trans. Keith 1909: 301–302; thanks to Pashaura Singh for drawing my attention to this passage).

29. Scholarship sometimes still refers to this dynasty as the “Cedis” (e.g., Fitzgerald 2009), on the basis of a rather difficult reading in Khāravela’s Udayagiri inscription [46]. The records of other kings, however, use the title Mahāmeghavāhana (see appendix A).

30. See [46]. Lüders (1911: 62) had already recognized in this inscription an early praśasti. Some scholars have been troubled by the fact that Khāravela’s inscription is in a western language rather than an eastern language, and have postulated either that Khāravela employed a western scribe (Barua 1929: 163) or that his aversion to the language of the people of Magadha was greater than his aversion to the language of the Sātavāhanas (Witzel 2006: 466). But there was only one language in which serious claims about political power could be advanced in Khāravela’s time, and that was the western Middle Indic used also by the Sātavāhanas. In its year-by-year organization, Khāravela’s inscription recalls those of Aśoka and ultimately, if indirectly, that of Darius as Behistun (Pollock 2006b: 18.–181).

31. Line 4: dutiye ca vase acitayitā sātakaṇiṃ pacima-disaṃ haya-gaja-nara-radha-bahulaṃ daṃḍaṃ pathāpayati kañhabeṃnāgatāya senāya vitās[e]ti asika-nagaraṃ (“And in the second year, without a care for Sātakaṛni, he sent his forces, with plentiful horses, elephants, infantry, and chariots, to the west, and when his army had reached the Krishna and Wainganga rivers, he terrified the city of Ṛṣika”). Reading asika for Barua’s asaka and kañhabeṃnāgatāya with Jayaswal (1929–1930) instead of Barua’s ka[liṃgā]gatāya ca. Nath 1990 has convincingly identified Ṛṣikanagara (asikanagara) with the town of Adam in northeastern Maharashtra.

32. See Cox 2013: 136 for a short discussion of these compounds. One example is bh[ī]ta-tasite ca nikhita-chata-bhiṃgāre hita-ratana-sāpateye sava-raṭhika-bhojake pāde vaṃdāpayati, literally, “he made all of the Raṭṭhikas and Bhojakas, having been first terrified and then trembling, having had their parasols and pitchers cast away, having had their jewels and riches taken away, to bow at his feet.”

33. An example is haya-gaja-nara-radha-bahulaṃ, cited in n. 30 above. I have tried and failed to find examples in this inscription of metrical prose such as the veḍha discussed by Jacobi 1885 and Mette 1973.

34. Of its literary qualities, the repetition of the key word caka in different senses (apatihata-caka-vāhana-balo caka-dhar[o] guta-cako pavata-cako), a kind of lāṭānuprāsa, can be mentioned.

35. sava-pāsaṃḍa-pūjako sava-devāyatana-saṃkāra-kārako in line 17; sava-gharavāsinaṃ ca sava-rāja-bhatakānaṃ ca sava-gahapatikānaṃ ca [sava]-bamhaṇānaṃ ca pāna-bhojanaṃ dadāti arahatānaṃ [samaṇānaṃ ca] [pāna-bhojanaṃ] dadāti [sata-sahasehi] in line 9.

36. [18]. My argument presupposes a date of ca. 84 CE for the death of Gautamīputra Śrī Sātakarṇi, which is supported by a variety of evidence (Seeley and Turner 1984; Bhandare 1999; Cribb 1992, 1998, 2000; Shastri 1996c). The essential points of this argument, however, are compatible with the older date of ca. 124 CE (Sircar 1966).

37. [11]; see figure 5. Nakanishi and von Hinüber restore [vaseṭhi] instead of [gotami] in the king’s metronymic, which is inexplicable in view of the parallels to the Nāsik inscription. I do not know where the Sannati stela is currently located (it is not at the Gulbarga museum, where many of the other stelae from Sannati are housed).

38. “...khatiya-dapa-māna-mada-nasa-saka-yavana-palhava-nisūdanasa dhama-pajita-kara-viniyoga-karasa kitāparādhe pi satu-jane apāṇa-hisā-rucisa dijāvara-kuṭuba-vivadhanasa khakharāta-vasa-niravasesa-karasa sātavāhana-kula-yasa-patithāpana-karasa sava-maḍalābhivādita-ca[ra]ṇasa vinivatita-cātuvaṇa-sakarasa aneka-samarāvajita-satusaghasa aparājita-vijaya-patāka-satujana-dupadhasanīya-puravarasa kula-purisa-paraparā-gata-vipula-rāja-sadasa...” Later sources identify the sounds of royalty as five drums (pañcamahāśabda).

39. There are interesting recollections of this story in the Jain tradition. The commentaries on the Āvaśyaka (see Balbir 1993a: 60) and the Prabandha of Pādalipta relate that the Sātavāhana king sent an agent to Nahapāna in Bharuch who prevailed upon Nahapāna to spend all of his money on religious donation; when Nahapāna ran out of money, the Sātavāhana king besieged Bharuch and killed Nahapāna. See also Klatt 1882: 252, which notes that Nabhovāhana (Nahapāna) ruled for forty years according to Jain chronology (such a duration is corroborated by his series of portrait coins). For the most detailed narrative of this conflict, based primarily on numismatic evidence, see Bhandare 1999.

40. This range—from highly composite to highly analytic over the course of a single sentence—would become typical of later prose-poetry in Sanskrit, such as Subandhu and Bāṇa.

41. “This is deliberate art, however little we may admire it,” Keith 1920: 50 concedes. Winternitz 1985 [1920]: 38 asserts that the inscription has “all the characteristics of the style of ornate prose.” Kane 1961: 336 says that the Nāsik inscription “exhibits the same traits” as the literary prose of Rudradāman’s Junāgaṛh inscription.

42. A few specific echoes can be singled out. “The one whose mounts have drunk from the waters of the three oceans” (ti-samuda-toya-pīta-vāhanasa) is echoed in a similar title, “overlord of the three oceans” (trisamudrādhipataye) applied to a king named Sātavāhana who briefly appears in Bāṇa’s Deeds of Harṣa (seventh century CE). Another title, “the single archer” (ekadhanudharasa), recurs as a title of Dilīpa in Kālidāsa’s Dynasty of Raghu (3.31, fifth century CE).

43. Pollock, who coined the term “poetry of politics,” recognizes in the Nāsik inscription a “quasi praśasti” (Pollock 2006a: 79 n. 11).

44. Lévi 1904: 170.

45. [100]. For the distinction between expressive and documentary purposes, see Pollock 2006a: 11.–118. For the Nāsik inscription of Uṣavadāta, see Salomon 1998: 89–90. Damsteegt 1978: 212 distinguishes a “eulogy” in “almost pure Sanskrit” from the rest of the inscription. “[T]he language of the concluding part is different from that of the rest of the record,” Sircar 1965: 167 n. 2 observes. Uṣavadāta tried to write in correct Sanskrit but “fell back into the traditional Prākṛt” after a few lines, Witzel 2006: 467 claims, overlooking the functional differentiation. Tieken 2006: 108 n. 29 ignores this inscription.

46. [99].

47. Bronkhorst 2014.

48. See the prohibitions in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka mentioned above.

49. [96], [12].

50. Seven Centuries W272: kīraṃti ccia ṇāsaï uae reha vva khalaaṇe mettī | sā uṇa suaṇammi kaā aṇahā pāhāṇareha vva || (“friendship with wicked people is destroyed as soon as it’s made, like a letter drawn on water, but friendship with good people is like a letter carved onto stone”). On this text, see chapter 3.

51. Pollock 2006a: 72.

52. [12]; Bhandare 1999: 135.

53. [104].

54. The suggestion of Witzel 2006: 467 that the Kṣaharātas tried and failed “to imitate the classical Sanskrit used by their Kṣatrapa neighbors” (i.e., Rudradāman), is based on an outdated chronology (that of Sircar 1965). Nahapāna lived about a hundred years before Rudradāman.

55. According to Lubin 2005: 94, the Kṣatrapas “demonstrate[d] the legitimacy of [their] rule by embracing the sacral authority of the brahmins.” Witzel 2006: 467 invokes a general rule that “outsiders chose to follow local, native tradition and religion strenuously as they wanted to legitimize themselves in the eyes of their subjects (and neighbors).” Neither defines legitimation or justifies the extension of legitimation theory from twentieth-century Europe to first-century India.

56. Lévi 1904: 174. Pollock similarly argues that these foreigners “sought to turn Sanskrit into an instrument of cultural-political power of a new sort” (2006a: 72).

57. Rapson 1908 [1967]: xci and Sircar 1963–1964c call the language “Dravidian Prakrit”; it has since been interpreted as Tamil (Panneerselvam 1969; Krishnan 2002) or Telugu (Sarma 1973). Comparison with early Tamil inscriptions confirms their interpretation as Tamil (Mahadevan 2003: 199).

58. Damsteegt 1978, 1989.

59. This is the view of Damsteegt 1978; see p. 223 for the influence of Mathurā and p. 208 for the influence of Brahmanical culture).

60. The Sanskrit form is kṣatrapasya; the Gāndhārī forms are kṣatrapasa and kṣatravasa (see http://gandhari.org/n_dictionary.php). All Middle Indic languages (including Gāndhārī) have the ending -assa, written -asa in the Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī scripts of this period.

61. [28]; [104], line 12: dakṣiṇāpathapates sātakarṇer dvir api nīrvyām avajītyāvajītya [sic] saṃbaṃdhā[vi]dūra[ta]yā anutsādanāt prāptayaśasā.

62. In this connection, it is worth mentioning a relief at Kanaganahalli that depicts the Sātavāhana ruler Puḷumāvi (probably Vāsiṣṭhīputra Śrī Puḷumāvi) making a gift of the city of Ujjayinī, the most important city of the Kārdamaka Kṣatrapas, to an otherwise-unknown “Ajayanta” (see [25]). Evidently there is much we do not know about the history of relations between the Sātavāhanas and their northern neighbors.

63. Pollock 2006a: 72.

64. Pischel’s remark that “many a famous Sanskrit work, I think, will turn out to be an imitation of a Prâkrit original” (1886: 13 n. 1) should thus be modified to reflect translation on the level of discourse rather than on the level of the individual work. I thank Sheldon Pollock for the reference.

65. Sircar 1939; for a more recent statement of the same view, see Menon 1996: 251.

66. [105].

67. [55], taking as a representative sample the inscription that Vogel labels as C3 (of the Buddha): sidhaṃ namo bhagavato devarāja-sakatasa supabudha-bodhino savaṃñuno sava-satānukampakasa jita-rāga-dosa-moha-vipamutasa mahāgaṇi-vasabha-[gaṃ]dhahathisa samma-sam[budh]asa dhātuvara-parigahitasa; (of Śrī Cāntamūla): mahārajasa virūpakhapati-mahāsena-parigahitasa hiraṇa-koṭa-go-satasahasa-hala-satasaha[sa-]dāyisa savathesu apatihata-saṃkapasa vāsiṭhiputasa ikhākusa siri-cātamūlasa. Note the linking of the two passages by the word parigahitasa, and the connection between apatihata-saṃkapasa and the apratihata-cakasa of Nāṇeghāṭ and the apatihata-bala-vāhano of Udayagiri. A longer eulogy of the Buddha is found in inscription G. For a new study of the Ikṣvāku inscriptions, we look forward to the results of a research project directed by Stefan Baums, Arlo Griffiths, Ingo Strauch, and Vincent Tournier.

68. No Sanskrit inscription is dated to the reigns of Śrī Cāntamūla (r. ca. 225–240) or Vīrapuruṣadatta (r. ca. 240–265); Sanskrit inscriptions appear in the reign of Ehuvula Cāntamūla (r. ca. 265–290) and Rudrapuruṣadatta (r. ca. 290–315). One of Vīrapuruṣadatta’s wives was Rudradharabhaṭṭārikā, “daughter of the mahārāja of Ujjayinī” (ujanikā-mahāra-balikā mahādevi rudradharabhat[ā]rikā, in [55], inscription B5), and one of Ehuvula Cāntamūla’s wives—and the mother of Rudrapuruṣadatta—was Vammabhaṭṭa, “the daughter of a Mahākṣatrapa” in [75].

69. [107]. For this reading and interpretation see Salomon (2013): saṃjayapur[ī]to yo rāj[ā]bhi āva[nta]kena śakena Rudradām[e]na vānavāsakena [ca] viṣṇurudraśivalānanda[sāta]karṇṇinā [s]th[ā]nāto pi na cālito.

70. [80], verse 33 (in an obscure mātrāsamaka meter):

sayiha bhagavato bhavasyādidevasya siddhyālaye siddha-gāndharvva-rakṣo-gaṇais sevite

vividha-niyama-homa-dīkṣā-parair brāhmaṇai snātakai stūyamāne sadā-mantra-vādaiś śubhaiḥ |

sukṛtibhir avanīścarair ātma-niśśreyasaṃ prepsubhis sātakarṇyādibhiś śraddhayābhyarccite

idam urusalilopayogāśrayaṃ bhūpatix kārayām āsa kākusthavarmmā taḍākam mahat ||

71. Pischel 1981 [1900]: 8 n. 5.

72. For the loss of initial s see Burrow 1947; the pronunciation of post-nasal or intervocal stops as voiced is a general feature of many South Dravidian languages (such as Tamil) in which voice is not contrastive.

73. These are found in the inscriptions of the Sālaṅkāyanas [86, 87, 88] (the relatively late inscription of Hastivarman II [89] shows a promiscuous mixture of Sanskrit and Middle Indic words), the Vāśim plates of the early Vākāṭakas [90], and the Pātagaṇḍigūḍem plates of Ehuvula Cāntamūla [71].

74. [51], [52].

75. [90], [83], [71], [84], [86], [87], [88]. The one (very early) exception to the rule is Rāmgaṛh (Falk 1991).

76. Compare the observation of Sankaranarayanan (2009: 49): “Now, if one chooses to compare the elegant poetic language of the Sanskrit inscriptions of the early Guptas... on the one hand and the colourless prose of the Prakrit records of the last phase of the Prakrit age... on the other, one cannot easily escape the conclusion that it was the ardent desire for poetry on the part of kings of the age and of their favourite court poets that must have been responsible for this change-over in medium.”

77. See Pollock 2006a: 11.–161 on praśasti. Sircar 1939 already appreciated the influence of the Sātavāhanas on subsequent political discourse.

78. ti-samuda-toya-pīta-vāhanasa [18]; trisamudranātha- (in the Kevala Narasiṃha temple inscription [95]), catur-udadhi-salilāsvādita-yaśā (in the Pune plates of Prabhāvatīgupta [91]).

79. Salomon 1998: 85–86.

80. See Salomon 2001; Salomon 1995: 302: “the tendency has been... to view, and sometimes dismiss, the hybrids as some sort of exceptional and ‘artificial’ linguistic construction, or to attribute them to some vaguely stated ‘influence’ of Prakrit on Sanskrit or vice versa.” For the problems of hybridity, see Flood 2009: 150–151; for a criticism of Franklin Edgerton’s expansive definition of “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit,” see Brough 1954.

81. Strauch 2012: 150; see also Bronkhorst 2010, 2014.

82. See, with deep reservations, Bronkhorst 2011: 18: according to its reading of early Indian sources, “different languages, each exhibiting its own structure, do not exist. Ultimately there is only Sanskrit, and other languages in principle share its structure.” In this connection it is interesting to note that a Bactrian inscription of Kaniṣka (Sims-Williams 2004) from Rabatak around 130 CE refers to the “Indian” (υνδοοαο, hindwa) forms of several names.

83. Sanskritization “did not only involve a linguistic shift within the boundaries of Buddhist literature but... also... a cultural change which implied a more intensive confrontation with new branches of non-Buddhist literature composed in Sanskrit,” Strauch 2012: 151 rightly says of Gandharan Buddhist literature.

84. These processes had been known in some form to earlier scholars (Jacobi 1886 calls the first Ausbildung and the second Verschriftlichung).

CHAPTER 3. INVENTING PRAKRIT: THE LANGUAGES OF LITERATURE

1. Bakhtin 1981: 295.

2. Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 15–16. The only comprehensive history of Prakrit literature that I know is Jain 1961, which is organized into Jain and non-Jain sections (Jain 2004 presents much of the same material in English). For the conceit of “two histories” and its critical potential see Kaviraj 2003 and especially Chakrabarty 2000.

3. Winternitz 1985 [1920]: 37; Keith 1920: 223–226; Lienhard 1984: 64. For the golden age see Müller 1883; the idea is reprised in Ingalls 1976.

4. Bühler 1890; Lévi 1908 contains a short aperçu of the discovery and reception of Aśvaghoṣa’s works (and was followed in 1909 by Haraprasad Shastri’s discovery of Aśvaghoṣa’s poem titled Handsome Nanda).

5. See Wright 1966, which uses the designation “non-classical,” partly as a provocation.

6. Jacobi 1894.

7. Pollock 1996, 2006a.

8. Jacobi 1908–1909.

9. Warder 1990 [1974]: §§613–662; Pollock 2006a: 77ff.

10. Comm. on Prakrit Piṅgala v. 1 (p. 2 in Kāvyamālā edition): saṃskṛte tv ādyakavir vālmīkiḥ, prākṛte śālivāhanaḥ, bhāṣākāvye piṅgalaḥ.

11. Seven Centuries of Āryās v. 38: prākṛtamayaṃ nibandhaṃ vitanvatā śālavāhananṛpeṇa | kāvyānām itareṣāṃ tadvikṛtitvaṃ kathitam arthāt ||.

12. Joglekar 1946.

13. One exception is the Jain monk Rājaśekhara. He is forced to conclude that Sātavāhana is a family name (sātavāhanakramikaḥ sātavāhana iti) by a chronological discrepancy: one king of this name, he says, was a contemporary of Vikramāditya in 57 BCE, and another was a contemporary of Kālakācārya in 466 CE (Twenty-four Prabandhas, p. 152).

14. Hāla is seventeenth on the unified list provided by Pargiter 1913: 36, preceded by Ariṣṭakarṇa (a name that must either be a corruption or a false Sanskritization) and followed by Mantalaka (who is mentioned in the label inscriptions at Kanaganahalli [25].)

15. Shobhana Gokhale (1988) claimed to have discovered a coin of Hāla, but Chandrashekhar Gupta (1993) showed that her reading is impossible. For the need to supplement the purāṇas with material sources in the evaluation of their historical claims, see Bhandare 2006.

16. A minister named Hāla is mentioned in an inscription from Kuḍā [45], probably from the first century CE. A similar form, Hālaka, is attested on a Brāhmī label on an ostrakon from Egypt dating to around the second century CE (Salomon 1991: 733). The feminine form Hālaṇṇikā is attested from Kanheri [106]. For the derivation see the introduction to Upadhye’s edition of the Līlāvaī, p. 43, Sircar 1968: 207, and Warder 1990 [1974]: §771. Gopalachari 1941: 42 derives the name from sātakarṇi rather than from sātavāhana. Warder identifies Hāla with Vāsiṣṭhīputra Śrī Puḷumāvi, evidently because he was one of the dynasty’s greatest kings and most likely to have patronized a great work of literature.

17. In one of his Sanskrit lexicons, the Wishing-Stone of Meanings, Hemacandra lists Hāla and Sātavāhana as synonyms (3.376). Similarly, Kṣīrasvāmin, in his commentary to Amara’s Treasury 2.8.2, quotes a verse that gives Hāla and Śālivāhana as synonyms. In his Garland of Regional Nouns, Hemacandra lists Hāla as a synonym of Sālāhaṇa (8.66), Kuṃtala as a synonym of Hāla (2.36), and Caüraciṃdha as another synonym of Hāla (3.7). In the latter two cases, Hemacandra explains Hāla as Sātavāhana in his Sanskrit commentary. Hemacandra evidently thought, along with Rājaśekhara before him, that Hāla-Sātavāhana was a king of the Kuntala region in what is now northern Karnataka. The name Caturacihna means that he used the signature catura, a fact for which Hemacandra is the only authority. Hāla and Sātavāhana are used interchangeably in the Līlāvaī of Kautūhala and the Twenty-four Prabandhas of Rājaśekhara.

18. Sources for these stories (many of which have been assembled by Upadhye 1970: 6–12 and Ācārya 1982) include, from Jain narrative literature, Twenty-four Prabandhas), pp. 136ff., Wishing-Stone of Prabandhas, pp. 10ff., Collection of Old Prabandhas, pp. 11ff.; Many Places of Pilgrimage (pp. 59ff.), as well as the related prabandhas of Pālitta and Nāgārjuna in these texts and in Deeds of the Promoters; the Līlāvatī of Kautūhala and the Vīracarita (Jacobi 1876); the relevant sections of the Kashmiri versions of the Great Story (Kṣemendra’s Cluster of Blossoms from the Great Story and Somadeva’s Ocean of the Rivers of Story); and sections of Bāṇa’s Deeds of Harṣa and Daṇḍin’s Avantisundarī.

19. Twenty-four Prabandhas, pp. 147–148.

20. Weber 1874: 348: prākṛtamayaṃ gadyapadyamayaṃ kāvyaṃ kartum upacakramire.

21. For “collective effervescence” see Durkheim 1995 [1912].

22. Wishing-Stone of Prabandhas, pp. 10–11: sa śrīsātavāhanas taṃ pūrvabhavavṛttāntaṃ jātismṛtyā sākṣātkṛtya tataḥprabhṛti dānadharmam ārādhayan sarveṣāṃ mahākavīnāṃ viduṣāṃ ca saṅgrahaparaḥ catasṛbhiḥ svarṇakoṭībhir gāthācatuṣṭayaṃ krītvā saptaśatīgāthāpramāṇaṃ sātavāhanābhidhānaṃ saṅgrahagāthākośaṃ śāstraṃ nirmāpya nānāvadātanidhiḥ suciraṃ rājyaṃ cakāra.

23. Seven Centuries W3: satta saāiṃ kaïvacchaleṇa koḍīa majjhaārammi | hāleṇa viraïāiṃ sālaṃkārāṇa gāhāṇaṃ ||. Numbers prefixed with W refer to Weber’s 1881 editio princeps, from which I take the text unless otherwise noted. A crore is ten million.

24. This interpretation was proposed by Sohoni 1964.

25. Seven Centuries W467: āvaṇṇāi kulāiṃ do ccia jāṇaṃti uṇṇaïṃ ṇeuṃ | gorīa hiaadaïo ahavā sālāhaṇaṇariṃdo ||. The first word may mean “connected with Pārvatī” (āparṇa) or “fallen on hard times” (āpanna); the idea is that it’s impossible for anyone (other than Śiva himself) to enhance the status of Pārvatī’s family by marriage, since she is the daughter of the already exalted Himālaya mountain. The verse is unanimously ascribed to Poṭṭisa, whom tradition regards as a minister of Sātavāhana (a role he plays in the romance Līlāvatī), although the printed text of Pītāmbara’s commentary mistakenly associates the author name with the preceding verse.

26. For the language of Aśvaghoṣa’s dramas, see Lüders 1911. Lenition is the softening of consonants (such as the intervocalic t in mata, softened to mada and finally maa); see the discussion in chapter 4. Weber 1881; Keith 1920: 224; and Jacobi 1886: §14 argue for this.

27. Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: §214.

28. For the conservatism of the inscriptional language, see Warder 1968.

29. Bhandarkar 1917: 189. The word horā (from Greek ὥρα) could have been introduced as early as the second century BCE, when Greeks began to play an important role on the Indian political scene. It is discussed at length in Sphujidhvaja’s Yavanajātaka (“Greek Genethlialogy”), which was composed in 149 CE. For the seven-day week, see Bennedik 2007, who does not mention Seven Centuries. I thank Somadeva Vasudeva for the reference.

30. See Sircar 1969, who likewise maintained that Candragupta II was the “first” Vikramāditya. Legends about King Sātavāhana make him a rival and contemporary of Vikramāditya (as in the Vīracarita).

31. A first-century date has long been favored by people uninfluenced or unconvinced by Weber’s and Bhandarkar’s arguments; see, e.g., Smith 1902: 660; Konow 1894. See also Gopalachari 1941, cited in n. 33 below.

32. Mirashi 1947, 1960a, 196.b. See Sohoni 1999 for a criticism.

33. See Mirashi 1947. I do not know where he cites Pītāmbara’s commentary from, but the verses he mentions as 616, 617, and 618 are found as 619, 620, and 621 in the edition of Jagdish Lal Shastri (matching the numeration of Weber’s 1881 edition). W619, W620, and W621 appear in Bhuvanapāla and Ājaḍa’s recension in a different position and are assigned completely different authors. Pītāmbara attributes W95 to Vākpatirāja, but the corresponding name is spelled as Bappayarāya in Ājaḍa’s commentary, and assigned to W96. The form Vākpatirāja found in Pītāmbara and Bhuvanapāla may be a false Sanskritization; I strongly suspect that the original form was Bapparāya, the name of an author who is quoted in Svayambhū’s Meters (4.2.7). Only W621 and W95 (as well as W96) are common to all recensions in Weber’s edition. The idea of a first- or second-century “kernel” is also found in Gopalachari 1941: 42.

34. A manuscript of Bhuvanapāla’s commentary at the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology in Ahmedabad notes in the margin that Poṭṭisa, to whom W4 is ascribed, was Hāla’s minister.

35. The quotation is from Zumthor 1992 [1972]: 5–6, in reference to twelfth-century Europe. Tieken 2001: 111 also suspects that “the gāthās were composed only at the moment of their inclusion in the Sattasaī.”

36. Novetzke 2008.

37. See Songs of the Buddhist Nuns (Therīgāthā), trans. Hallisey, p. xxiii.

38. Verse 468 of the Topical Anthology (Vajjālagga), compiled some time after Seven Centuries, memorializes Hāla: “They say women are faithful if they come from good families. But that’s not true: they are faithful if they have a good husband. Even when Hāla went to heaven, the Godāvarī river did not leave her master’s place, the city of Pratiṣṭhāna” (purisaviseseṇa saïttaṇāi na kulakkameṇa mahilāṇa | saggaṃ gae vi hāle na muyai golā païṭṭhāṇaṃ ||, reading païṭṭhāṇaṃ as both pratiṣṭhānaṃ and pati-sthānaṃ).

39. Desai 1985: 18–28 records the common interpretation of couples (mithunas) as auspicious symbols in sculptural art of the Sātavāhana period, but also notes their decorative function and the prominence of the erotic (śṛṅgāra) in the decorative program of rock-cut caves and stūpas; see also Meister 1979: fn. 1. I know of no art-historical study of the stelae from Sannati and environs (for images, see Sarma and Varaprasada Rao 1993). For Kanaganahalli, see Poonacha 2013 and Zin 2013.

40. See Ali 2004: 72 and Chakladar 1990 [1929]: 30–33. The most convincing argument for this date is the fact that the text refers to Kuntala Sātakarṇi (possibly belonging to the so-called Banavāsi branch of the Sātavāhanas, who ruled in the third century) and the Ābhīras (who also ruled over various parts of India immediately after the breakup of the Sātavāhana empire in the third century), but not to the Guptas.

41. For these legends see Lévi 1903; see now Ollett 2017.

42. See Wilden 2014: 8, placing the earliest collections in the first century CE.

43. Seven Centuries, W2: amaaṃ pāuakavvaṃ paḍhiuṃ souṃ ca je ṇa āṇaṃti | kāmassa tattatattiṃ kuṇaṃti te kaha ṇa lajjaṃti || (Tieken reads taṃta- for tatta-). Note that this is missing from the recension of Bhuvanapāla and Ājaḍa (and of Upādhyāya Lakṣmīdhara, who follows their recension for the first hundred verses).

44. Tieken 2001: 73–79; Khoroche and Tieken 2009: 2–6.

45. Kāma Sūtra, p. 53: veśyābhavane sabhāyām anyatamasyodavasite vā samānavidyābuddhiśīlavittavayasāṃ saha veśyābhir anurūpair ālāpair āsanabandho goṣṭhī, tatra caiṣāṃ kāvyasamasyā kalāsamasyā vā. Analysis of Literature, p. 55: tatra yathāsukham āsīnaḥ kāvyagoṣṭhīṃ pravarttayet bhāvayet parīkṣeta ca, vāsudeva-sātavāhana-śūdraka-sāhasāṅkādīn sakalān sabhāpatīn dānamānābhyām anukuryāt.

46. Jacobi 1886: §14, also Bühler 1890 and Konow 1894, all of whom place the origins of kāvya in the forgotten past; Zumthor 1992 [1972]: 35.

47. See, e.g., Mirashi 1960a: “the poets belonged to all ranks of the society from the king to the peasant.” Weber 1881 calls the Prakrit of Seven Centuries a lebendige Volkssprache (xxiii). For further examples, see Tieken 2001: 54. For a critical response, see Boccali 2009.

48. Seven Centuries, W169: ṇikkammāhi vi chettāhi pāmaro ṇea vaccae vasahiṃ | muapiajāāsuṇṇaïagehadukkhaṃ pariharaṃto ||.

49. That this work represents a collection of popular songs is highly improbable,” Beames 1872: 222 observes. “Although they are full of allusions to rural scenery and occupations, they appear to bear no greater marks of being real songs of the peasantry, than the insipid couplets of the bergers and bergères of Louis XIV’s court did to the utterances of the gaunt starving peasantry of France at that epoch.”

50. Tieken 2001: 79; emphasis added.

51. Like many other readers of this literature (including the traditional commentators), I find little in the verse or even in the conventions of reading Prakrit poetry to recommend Tieken’s interpretation. But the word “empty,” or more precisely “emptied out” (suṇṇaïa), does invite a comparison with the empty temples where Seven Centuries’ villagers often have their liaisons, and might add to the farmer’s disappointment.

52. Cf. Friedhelm Hardy’s note in his introduction to Govardhana’s Seven Centuries of Āryās (p. xxi): “Albrecht Weber, the first scholar who worked seriously on the Sattasaī, mistakenly thought that Hala’s collection represented ‘peasant poetry’ merely because farmers are spoken of in some of the verses. In fact, the opposite is true: in Hala, peasants are specifically marked because they are outside the poets’ own milieu.”

53. Tieken too considers clever speech to be one of Seven Centuries’ themes, but this is an “exception” to the general pattern (2001: 68–72). For the date of Bhuvanapāla, see Vasudeva and Chiarucci 2011.

54. Smith 1985: 100.

55. For the expansion of trade and guilds under the Sātavāhanas, see Ray 1986.

56. Gutzwiller 2006: 401.

57. Cf. Winternitz 1985 [1920]: 108: “these Prākrit lays are not in fact folk-songs in the real sense of the word, but probably popular models of imitated creations of Indian ornate poets, who strove not only for describing the life and activity, above all the life of love, but would also reflect in the feelings and sentiments of the country girls and country lads, the herdsmen and cowherdesses, the female gardener, miller’s wife, the hunter and the labourer.” Lienhard 1973: 115 observes: “there can be no doubt that the Sattasaī presents a poetry of very elaborate design and an extremely refined taste and thus is far from being unconventional and simple.”

58. Seven Centuries, W637: dhaṇṇā vasaṃti ṇīsaṃkamohaṇe vahalasaddalavaīe | vāaṃdolaṇahallaṃtaveṇugahaṇe giriggāme ||. I translate the reading of Bhuvanapāla (679), which seems better than the vulgate reading (which has pattala for saddala and oṇavia for hallaṃta).

59. Ibid., W638: papphullagharakalaṃbā ṇidhoasilāalā muiamorā | pasaraṃtojjharakalaalamaṇoharā iha giriggāmā ||. I again follow Bhuvanapāla (680).

60. For a discussion of the logic of the commentaries on Seven Centuries, see Dundas 1985. For Abhinavagupta’s contention that one can only appreciate these verses by reconstructing the “speaker’s meaning” from the context, see the discussion in chapter 4 below. For the debate, which focused on the ninth-century Light on Suggestion and its claim that “suggestion” (dhvani) is the key to literary meaning, see McCrea 2008.

61. Seven Centuries, W705 might also be mentioned, although it occurs only in Pītāmbara’s text and a few other versions of the vulgate: gāmāruha mhi gāme vasāmi ṇaaraṭṭhiiṃ ṇa āṇāmi | ṇāariāṇaṃ païṇo haremi jā homi sā homi || (“I grew up in the village, I live in the village, and I know nothing of city life. But I snatch away the husbands of city women. I am what I am.”). For an argument against Tieken’s ironic readings that is based on this second level of meaning, see Boccali 1990: 24–25.

62. See, e.g., Seven Centuries, W174: vaṃkacchipecchirīṇaṃ vaṃkullavirīṇa vaṃkabhamirīṇaṃ | vaṃkahasirīṇa puttaa puṇṇehi jaṇo pio hoi || (“Their glances are crooked. Their speech is crooked. Their walk is crooked. Their laugh is crooked. You have to be really lucky, my boy, to end up as their lover.”).

63. Jineśvara, Treasury of Gāthā-Jewels, 255. vaṃkabhaṇiyāiṃ katto katto addhacchipicchiyavvāiṃ | ūsasiyaṃ pi muṇijjaï chaïllajaṇasaṃkule gāme ||.

64. Seven Centuries, W720 (found only in some versions of the text, including the manuscripts Weber calls ξπχRST as well as Bhuvanapāla 534): diṭṭhāi jaṃ ṇa diṭṭho saralasahāvāi jaṃ ca ṇālavio | uvaāro jaṃ ṇa kao taṃ cia kaliaṃ chaïllehiṃ ||.

65. Here is Bhuvanapāla: “She does not want just anyone to figure out that she is attracted to him. But the very means by which she conceals her feelings ends up guiding the inference of clever people” (iyaṃ asminn anurakteti mā kaścid ajño jānātv iti ya eva svābhiprāyagopanopāyas tasyāḥ sa eva chekalokasya tadīyāśayonnayanaṃ jātaṃ). Patwardhan, in his translation, has reached the exact opposite conclusion: “clever observers drew their own conclusions (about her vanishing love for him).”

66. Seven Centuries, W163: vaṃkaṃ ko pulaïjjaü kassa kahijjaü suhaṃ va dukkhaṃ va | keṇa samaṃ va hasijjaü pāmarapaüre haaggāme || (“Who will send me a crooked glance? Who can I tell my joy and sorrow? Who will I laugh with, in this damned village filled with farmers?”).

67. Ibid., W428: parimalaṇasuhā garuā aladdhavivarā salakkhaṇāharaṇā | thaṇaā kavvālāa vva kassa hiae ṇa laggaṃti ||. The verse is 428 in Bhuvanapāla and 431 in Pītāmbara. For the technical term lakṣaṇa in this verse, see Raghavan 1973 [1942]: 2. Compare the cāṭu verse cited in Shulman and Narayana Rao 1998: 61: saṅgītaṃ sāhityaṃ ca sarasvatyāḥ stanadvayaṃ | ekam āpātamadhuraṃ anyad ālocanāmṛtaṃ ||.

68. A. K. Warder (1990 [1974]) was convinced that “embrace” is a technique characteristic of later literature, and he suspects verses that employ “embrace” of not being original. I do not share his skepticism. For the history of “embrace,” see Bronner 2010, who argues that it became a central technique in Sanskrit prose, as opposed to an occasional device, with Subandhu’s Vāsavadattā in the sixth century CE. See the discussion of W364 in the text just below.

69. W364: ko ‘ttha jaammi samattho thaïuṃ vitthiṇṇa-ṇimmaluttuṅgam | hiaaṃ tujjha ṇarāhiva gaaṇaṃ ca paoharaṃ mottum ||. The term paohara means both “cloud” and “breast,” and the adjectives apply to both the sky and the king’s heart (vitthiṇṇa means “extensive” and “generous”; ṇimmala “clear” and “pure”; uttuṃga “elevated” and “noble”). Bhuvanapāla (314) notes svāminaṃ kavir upagāthayitum idam āha, “the poet says this in order to eulogize his lord.”

70. Seven Centuries, W726 (only in χ, R, S, and Ājaḍa’s comm.): amiamaaṃ cia hiaaṃ hatthā taṇhāharā saaṃhāṇaṃ | caṃdamuhi kattha ṇivasaï amittadahaṇo tuha paāvo ||. χ is alone in reading caṃdamuhi; the others read caṃdamuha. Weber considers the construal with a king to be indisputably better (unstreitig besser) than the construal with a woman. Ājaḍa notes that the adjective amittadahaṇo can also be given another meaning, “neither Sūrya nor Agni.”

71. Deeds of Harṣa 14. avināśinam agrāmyam akarot sātavāhanaḥ | viśuddhajātibhiḥ kośaṃ ratnair iva subhāṣitaiḥ ||. The word jāti can refer to the origin of the jewels or the metrical form in which Seven Centuries’ verses are composed (alternatively, to the trope of “pure description,” better known as svabhāvokti, sometimes found in its verses).

72. Kuvalayamālā p. 3: bhaṇiivilāsavaïttaṇacollikke jo karei halie vi | kavveṇa kiṃ paütthe hāle hālā-viyāre vva ||. The verse is difficult to understand; Chojnacki 2008b suggests reading bollikke (“inclined to talking,” or so this word seems to mean in its only other occurrence in the Kuvalayamālā).

73. See, e.g., Jacobi 1886: §14, cited in nn. 26 and 46 above.

74. Tieken 2001: 78.

75. Hart 1975, 1976.

76. I thus agree with Siegfried Lienhard, who was one of the first to highlight these parallels, commenting: “I do not think that an obvious solution can be found for this problem at present” (1973: 116). See also Lienhard 1971. Tieken 2001 argues exactly the opposite of Hart, viz. that Tamil poetry is modeled on Prakrit poetry. For a recent exposition of the aesthetics of early Tamil poetry, see Shulman 2016.

77. See Mayilainātar’s urai on Naṉṉūl v. 48 (ceyvittōṉāṟ peyar peṟṟaṉa cātavākaṉam iṉantiraiya mutalāyiṉa) and Nakkīraṉār’s urai on the first section of Iṟaiyaṉār Akapporuḷ. See also Zvelebil 1973. I thank Blake Wentworth for his comments on these passages; he suggests that in the understanding of Mayilainātar and Nakkīraṉār, the Cātavākaṉam should have been a Tamil poem.

78. See Mirashi 1963: xxix. Mirashi has discussed the literary activities of the Vākāṭakas in several publications (e.g., 1945, 1960a). The fragments of Hari’s Victory can be consulted in Kulkarni 1991.

79. Mirashi 1951; note the reference to vacchomī (vatsagulmī) at the beginning of Rājaśekhara’s Karpūramañjarī.

80. Rāvaṇa’s Demise 1.10: parivaḍḍhaï viṇṇāṇaṃ saṃbhāvijjaï jaso viḍhappaṃti guṇā | suvvaï suurisacariaṃ kiṃ taṃ jeṇa ṇa haraṃti kavvālāvā ||.

81. Besides the edition, see Jain 1961: 381–393; 1977, 1997. The author of the Wanderings, who held the title vācaka, was different from Saṅghadāsa Kṣamāśramaṇa, who composed a bhāṣya on the Bṛhatkalpasūtra. The Great Story is connected to Sātavāhana in its Kashmiri versions (the Ocean of the Rivers of Story and Cluster of Blossoms from the Great Story), but not elsewhere.

82. Wanderings, Kahuppattī (pp. 1–26); on p. 1, guruparaṃparāgayaṃ vasudevacariyaṃ saṃgahaṃ vannaïssam.

83. Winternitz 1972 [1927]: 475: “for the Jains, more than any other sect, have in their writings, and especially in their exceptionally comprehensive narrative literature, never addressed themselves exclusively to the learned classes, but made an appeal to other strata of the people also.” Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 15: “The Jains, however, have always possessed a particular affinity for Prākrit as well as for the later popular languages.”

84. Piotr Balcerowicz (2001) argues that of the two philosophical works ascribed by tradition to “Siddhasena,” the Right-minded Reasoning (Sanmatitarka) in Prakrit is more than a century older than the Incarnation of Logic (Nyāyāvatāra) in Sanskrit; he calls the author of the former Siddhasena Divākara and the author of the latter Siddhasena Mahāmati.

85. See Granoff 1989b: 340ff.; 1990.

86. Haribhadra Sūri, Daśavaikālika Ṭīkā: bāla-strī-mūḍha-mūrkhāṇāṃ nṝṇāṃ cāritrakāṅkṣiṇām | anugrahārthaṃ tattvajñaiḥ siddhāntaḥ prākṛtaḥ kṛtaḥ || (quoted in Gandhi 1927: 73). For Haribhadra’s dates, see Jinavijaya 1988 [1919].

87. Endless Stream of Likenesses and Births, vv. 51–53: saṃskṛtā prākṛtā ceti bhāṣe prādhānyam arhataḥ | tatrāpi saṃskṛtā tāvad durvidaghdahṛdi sthitā || bālānām api sadbodhakāriṇī karṇapeśalā | tathāpi prākṛtā bhāṣā na teṣām api bhāsate || upāye sati kartavyaṃ sarveṣāṃ cittarañjanam | atas tadanurodhena saṃskṛteyaṃ kariṣyate ||.

88. See the discussion of the Sthānāṅgasūtra in chapter 5.

89. See Ghosal 1969.

90. See his grammar, Pischel 1981 [1900]: §§16–21.

91. See Punyavijaya 1968: 18: “The Vedas are a monopoly of the Brāhmaṇas, that is, no one else can understand them; in opposition to this, Lord Mahāvīra and Buddha proclaimed that knowledge should be easily accessible to all without any discrimination whatsoever.”

92. Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 15–16.

93. Jacobi 1879: 17; see also Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 19.

94. Such as the use of -o rather than -e in the masculine nominative singular, the loss of sibilant clusters (-mmi rather than -ṃsi), and the advanced lenition of intervocalic consonants (kaa- rather than kaḍa-).

95. See, e.g., Alsdorf 2006 [1965].

96. Von Hinüber 2001: §53.

97. Warder 1990 [1974] is the exception, since the canonical literature of the Jains does not fall under its scope. Jain Māhārāṣṭrī texts are treated by Winternitz in a separate volume from classical literature, and they are absent in Keith’s and Lienhard’s histories. Jain’s (1961) chapter on narrative literature (kathāsāhitya) includes all Jain authors, and its chapter on poetry (kāvyasāhitya) involves all non-Jain authors (with the exception of Hemacandra).

98. One exception is Abhinanda.

99. Jacobi 1908.

100. Warner 2002.

101. Although Vimala never names Vālmīki, there is no doubt that Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa was his primary source and the object of his critique (Chandra 1970: 234ff.; Kulkarni 1990: 218ff.).

102. Deeds of Padma 1.8: nāmāvaliyanibaddhaṃ āyariyaparaṃparāgayaṃ savvaṃ | vocchāmi paümacariyaṃ ahāṇupuvviṃ samāseṇa ||; cf. also 118.102.

103. Ibid. 2.105ff., especially 117 (aliyaṃ pi savvam eyaṃ uvavattiviruddhapaccayaguṇehiṃ | na ya saddahanti purisā havanti je paṇḍiyā loe ||); 3.8ff. (paümacariyaṃ mahāyasa ahayaṃ icchāmi pariphuḍaṃ souṃ | uppāiyā pasiddhī kusatthavādīhi vivarīyā ||”), especially 3.15 (na ya rakkhaso tti bhaṇṇaï dasāṇaṇo ṇeya āmisāhāro | aliyaṃ ti savvam eyaṃ bhaṇaṃti jaṃ kukaïṇo mūḍhā ||).

104. E.g., Ghatage 1934–1935b: “But in all these species of literature Jainism cannot claim originality in both conception and execution”; Kulkarni 1990: 5, without protest: “Modern scholars like Jacobi, Glasenapp and Winternitz hold that the mythology of the Jains is to a great extent derivative“(italics in original).

105. Taraṅgavatī probably mentioned that it was composed in Prakrit: Taraṅgalolā v. 13 has pāyayaṭṭhaṃ ca nibaïṃ [there is a metrical problem here, so perhaps read pāyaya-vayaṇa-nibaddhaṃ, or something similar] dhamma-kahaṃ suṇaha jaï na dubbuddhī | jo dhammaṃ suṇaï sivaṃ so jama-visayaṃ na pecchihii ||: “If your mind is up to it, listen to this religious story composed in Prakrit, for the one who listens to the auspicious dharma will not see Yama’s realm.” Vimala possibly refers to the language of his Deeds of Padma in v. 1.31 (suttāṇusārasarasaṃ raïyaṃ gāhāhi pāyaḍaphuḍatthaṃ | vimaleṇa paümacariyaṃ saṃkheveṇaṃ nisāmeha ||), although pāyaḍa- probably means “clear” (prakaṭa) rather than “Prakrit” (prākṛta).

106. See the extensive discussion of Pampa’s Kannada Bhāratam (ca. 950) in Language of the Gods (Pollock 2006a: 35.–363), and p. 384 for the reference to the “first vernacularization of the epic in South Asia” (Peruntēvaṉar’s Pārataveṇpā).

107. For some of the differences, see Balbir 1989.

108. For the niryuktis of the Āvaśyaka Sūtra, as well as the best introduction to the niryukti literature in general, see Balbir 1993b. The word niryukti- is the conventional Sanskritization of the Prakrit nijjutti-, which represents nirvyukti-.

109. Balbir 1993b: 39; Dhaky 2004: 138; Schubring 1962: 84. See Dhaky’s article for a complete survey of the evidence regarding Bhadrabāhu. For the legend of Bhadrabāhu’s migration to the South, see Ohira 1982: 126.

110. In some cases, later texts furnish a terminus ad quem, e.g., Jinabhadra’s mention of the Wanderings of Vasudeva in a commentary dated to 610 CE (Cort 2010: 313). Taraṅgavatī and another lost text, Malayavatī, are mentioned in a late canonical text, Anuyogadvārasūtra (sūtra 308), which in turn can only be dated by reference to the Council of Valabhī in the mid-fifth century at which the Śvetāmbara canon was finalized. Magadhasenā is mentioned with Taraṅgavatī and Malayavatī in Niśīthaviśeṣacūrṇi (Jain 1961: 376), and Pālitta himself is mentioned as a contemporary of King Muruṇḍa in the somewhat earlier Niśīthasūtrabhāṣya, v. 4460.

111. Later Jain traditions fixed Mahāvīra’s death at 526 BCE, so 4 CE, or perhaps a couple of generations later (we do not know what date Vimala himself accepted for Mahāvīra’s death), would not be far off the mark for Deeds of Padma. Jacobi 1918: 59* argued that Vimala’s acquaintance with Greek astrology places the text in the third century CE (but see n. 29 above for a critique of these kinds of arguments). See also the introduction to the edition of Jacobi and Jinavijaya; Winternitz 1972 [1927]: 477 n. 3, citing Ernst Leumann’s view that a first-century date is “incontestable”; Keith 1920: 34; and Warder 1990 [1974]: §853, noting that Vimala “may be regarded as among the earliest pioneers of Māhārāṣṭrī literature.”

112. This section presents a much-abridged version of an argument developed elsewhere (Ollett Forthcoming). For Taraṅgavatī and its later abridgements, see Warder 1990 [1974]: §§835–850; Chaudhari 1973: 335ff.; and Jain 1961: 373–381, who notes (373): “suprasiddh pādaliptasūri sab se pahle jain vidvān haiṃ jinhoṃne taraṃgavatī nāmkā svataṃtra kathā-graṃth likhkar prākṛta kathā-sāhitya meṃ ek naī paraṃparā ko janm diyā” (“The well-known Pādalipta Sūri was the first of all Jain scholars to gave birth to a new tradition of Prakrit narrative literature by writing an independent romance called Taraṅgavatī”). Leumann 1921 translated the abridgment into German (although his translation focuses on the narrative and thus abridges most of the extended descriptions). The only printed edition is Bhayani’s, which also provides a Gujarati translation (the basis for Siṅghavī’s Hindi translation); Thomas Oberlies is preparing a new edition (personal correspondence). Thanks to Bhayani’s translation, the text is well known in Gujarat and has occasioned some scholarly discussion (see Vijayaśīlacandrasūri 2005).

113. Taraṅgalolā 1640. hāiya-purīya-gacche sūrī jo vīrabhadda-nāmo tti | tassa sīsassa lihiyā jaseṇa gaṇinemicaṃdassa ||. Warder 1990 [1974]: §839 attributes the text to Yaśas. It is sometimes attributed to Nemicandra instead of Yaśas (e.g., by Jain 1961; Chaudhari 1973). The relevant section of Bhadreśvara’s Book of Stories was included by Harivallabh Bhayani in his edition of Taraṅgalolā. See also Malvania 1983, noting that Bhadreśvara produced a synopsis of Taraṅgavatī before including it in his Book of Stories (p. 82).

114. Taraṅgalolā 5–9: pālittaeṇa raïyā vittharao taha ya desi-vayaṇehiṃ | nāmeṇa taraṃgavaī kahā vicittā ya vipulā ya || katthaï kuvalāiṃ maṇoramāiṃ aṇṇattha guvila-juyalāiṃ | aṇṇattha chakkalāiṃ duppariallāi iyarāṇaṃ || na ya sā koi suṇeī na puṇo pucchei neva ya kaheī | viusāṇa navara joggā iyara-jaṇo tīe kiṃ kuṇaü || to ucceūṇa gāhāo pālittaeṇa raïāo | desī-payāiṃ mottuṃ saṃkhittayarī kayā esā || iyarāṇa hiyaṭṭhāe mā hohī savvahā vi voccheo | evaṃ viciṃtiūṇaṃ khāmeūṇa ya tayaṃ sūriṃ ||. The translation is tentative.

115. Bhayani 1993c.

116. The earliest narrative I refer to is the Prabandha of Pādalipta in Prakrit, edited by R. M. Shah from an unfortunately lacunose manuscript dated to 1235 CE (Shah’s edition includes a selection from Bhadreśvara’s Book of Stories). Later sources include the Deeds of the Promoters of Prabhācandra, dated to 1278 CE, pp. 28–40, and Jinabhadra’s Collection of Prabandhas, dated to 1210 CE, pp. 92–95 in the Purātanaprabandhasaṅgraha.

117. For the two Nāgarjunas, see White 1996: 61; for two Siddhasenas, see Balcerowicz 2001; and for two Haribhadras, see Williams 1965. For Pālitta, see Dhaky 1974, 2002. I have made a few adjustments to Dhaky’s argument (e.g., he thinks that the third Pālitta lived in the later tenth century, but I put him in the later eleventh or twelfth). The biographical sources are dealt with in greater detail in Ollett Forthcoming.

118. Dhaky 1974.

119. See Prabandha of Pādalipta vv. 272ff. (where Nahapāna is called Naravāhana; I suspect that naranāha is also a modernization of ṇahavāṇa); the Book of Stories by Bhadreśvara (twelfth century) calls the king Nahavāhana (see p. 95). On this conflict, see chapter 2.

120. For example Tilakamañjarī 23. prasannagaṃbhīrapathā rathāṅgamithunāśrayā | puṇyā puṇāti gaṅgevā gāṃ taraṅgavatī kathā || (“The meritorious story of Taraṅgavatī, where pairs of ruddy shelducks reside, purifies the earth like the Ganges, with its clear and deep waters / clear and profound style”).

121. The name Muruṇḍa suggests the period of Śaka and Kuṣāṇa supremacy in Pāṭaliputra before the Guptas (possibly contemporaneous with the Sātavāhanas), and three Rāṣṭrakūṭa kings named Kṛṣṇa ruled from Mānyakheṭa in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. As noted above, the hagiographical accounts conflate details from the lives of three different Pālittas.

122. Prabandha of Pādalipta, vv. 317–318. See also the story of Pādaliptasūri in Deeds of the Promoters, v. 332 (kathā taraṅgalolākhyā vyākhyātābhinavā puraḥ); Twenty-Four Prabanadhas, p. 28 (ekāṃ ca taraṅgalolāṃ nāma campū rājño ’gre navāṃ nirmāpya sadasi vyācakhye prabhuḥ). The fact that these prabandhas call the work Taraṅgalolā suggests that this later redaction of the Taraṅgavatī was already available in the thirteenth century.

123. Kuvalayamālā, p. 3: pālittaya-sālāhaṇa-chappaṇṇaya-sīha-ṇāya-saddehi | saṃkhuddha-muddha-sāraṃgao vva kaha tā payaṃ demi ||. The Chappaṇṇayas are a mysterious group of poets, presumably of the Sātavāhana age, who are sometimes mentioned in later works (by Daṇḍin, Abhinavagupta, etc.). A collection of Prakrit verses published by Upadhye (as an appendix to his edition of the Saptaśatīsāra of Vemabhūpāla) circulated under the title Verses of the Chappaṇṇayas (Chappaṇṇayagāhāo), although this work is evidently later and different form the work that Abhinavagupta knew. See Bhayani 1993e; Balbir and Besnard 1993–1994; Balbir 1995–1996.

124.Ibid., p. 3: ṇimmala-maṇeṇa guṇa-garuyaeṇa paramattha-rayaṇa-sāreṇa | pālittaeṇa hālo hāreṇa va sahaï goṭṭhīsu || cakkāya-juvala-suhayā rammattaṇa-rāya-haṃsa-kaya-harisā | jassa kula-pavvayassa va viyaraï gaṃgā taraṃgavaī ||. The last verse might rather be translated as a samāsokti, as Chojnacki does (2008b: 28): “Elle donne le bonheur avec ses paires de tadornes—ses stances—, et apporte la joie avec ses oies royales—sa grâce –, cette Ondine qui émane du noble Pādalipta comme la Gaṅgā du Mont noble, j’ai nommé la Taraṃgavaī.”

125. Deeds of Rāma, opening of chap. 33: hālenottamapūjayā kavivṛṣaḥ śrīpālito lālitaḥ khyātiṃ kām api kālidāsakṛtayo nītāḥ śakārātinā | śrīharṣo vitatāra gadyakavaye bāṇāya vāṇīphalaṃ sadyaḥ satkriyayābhinandam api ca śrīhāravarṣo ’grahīt ||. Pālita is an alternative Sanskritization of the Prakrit name Pālitta.

126. I include, e.g., the aorist in -īa, which is completely absent from both “courtly” Prakrit and Jain Prakrit of a later date, as well as suffixed pronouns such as tayaṃ, and a first-person present in -aṃ (see the extract cited below in the text for some examples, and see Bhayani 1993c; for comparison to the language of the Wanderings of Vasudeva, see Alsdorf 1936 and Esposito 2011).

127. The features are the use of the hiatus filler y (called ya-śruti) and the use of dental rather than retroflex nasals in word-initial position and word-interally when geminated; both are typically found in Jain Prakrit texts, and they are mentioned by the Jain grammarian Hemacandra, but they are also found, e.g., in the two poems about the tortoise that holds up the earth that Bhoja had inscribed in the eleventh century (see chapter 7). Hoernle had these doubts already in 1880; see his note on p. iv of his edition of Caṇḍa’s Definition of Prakrit.

128. Taraṅgalolā 4.–50: na ya suviṇae na leppe na cittakamme kahāsu ya bahūsu | diṭṭhā va suyā va mae ajjā iva suṃdarā mahilā || lāyaṇṇeṇa ghaḍiyā kā ṇu hu sohagga-maṃjarī iṇamo | pattā va caṃda-joṇhā rūva-guṇa-samaṇṇiyā ihaïṃ || kiṃ hojja payāvaïṇā iṇamo vara-juvaï-savva-sāreṇa | rūva-guṇa-samāüttā savvāyara-nimmiyā suyaṇu || jaï tāva erisaṃ se muṇḍiya-bhāvāe hojja lāyaṇṇaṃ | āsīya gihittaṇae rūva-sirī kettiyaṃ maṇṇe || bhūsaṇa-rahiesu vi kiha va tāva jalla-maïlesu aṃgesu | jattha ṭhiyā me diṭṭhī tatto na varajjaï caleuṃ || savvaṃgesu animisā pecchaṇalolā mae surūvaṃ ti | laggaṃtī laggaṃtī kahiṃci hiṃvāviyā diṭṭhī || ajjāe kaṃti-jutte aṇaṇṇa-sarise maṇa-pāsāya-kare | accharasāṇaṃ pi bhave maṇoraho erise rūve || mottūṇa ṇa paüma-vaṇa-saṃḍaṃ gahiya-nevacchā | gharamaïgayā bhagavaī dāna-guṇa-paḍoccayā lacchī ||.” There are various textual problems and uncertainties.

129. Seven Centuries W234: jassa jahiṃ cia paḍhamaṃ tissā aṃgammi ṇivaḍiā diṭṭhī | tassa tahiṃ cea ṭhiā savvaṃgaṃ keṇa vi ṇa diṭṭhaṃ || (trans. Khoroche and Tieken 2009: “On whichever part of her body / One’s eye falls first / There it stays. / No one has ever seen the whole of her body”); W271: kaha sā ṇivvaṇṇijjaü jīa jahāloiammi aṃgammi | diṭṭhī duvvalagāi vva paṃkapaḍiā ṇa uttaraï || (trans. ibid.: “How can I describe her? / Once you see her body / You cannot take your eyes off it: / They are like a helpless cow / Stuck in the mud”).

130. See Bhayani 1993c and the discussion of the gajjaṃte khe verse in chapter 4.

131. Deeds of the Promoters, Deeds of Pādalipta Sūri, v. 38: aṃbaṃ taṃbacchīe apupphiyaṃ pupphadaṃtapaṃtīe | navasālikaṃjiyaṃ navavahūi kuḍaeṇa me dinnaṃ ||. This story is also related in Jinabhadra’s Prabandhāvalī (in A Collection of Old Prabandhas) and in Rājaśekhara’s Twenty-four Prabandhas (p. 25); it was probably in the missing portion of the Prabandha of Pādalipta. I read the story somewhat differently than most of the Sanskrit sources, which connect it to Pālitta’s power of flight (pādalepa); the Prakrit sources, especially the version in Bhadreśvara’s Book of Stories, does not mention the power of flight at all, which I understand to be a later addition.

132. Warder 1990 [1974]: §839.

133. Sohoni 1999. Later Jain texts naturally have Hāla convert to Jainism.

134. Hoernle 1880b: lxii.

135. On Nāgārjuna and Sātavāhana, see Lévi 1936: 101ff.. Walser 2005 identifies the king, plausibly in my view, with Gautamīputra Yajñaśrī Sātakarṇi (see Warder 1968 for the suggestion that it is Vāsiṣṭhīputra Śrī Puḷumāvi). The later Jain traditions that make Nāgārjuna a student of Pālitta (see Granoff 1994) are probably based on the figure that M. A. Dhaky calls “Pādalipta II,” a Jain adept associated with Śatruñjaya around the seventh or eighth century, who may indeed be connected to the adept (siddha) and alchemist Nāgārjuna.

136. See appendix C.

137. Pollock 1995.

CHAPTER 4. THE FORMS OF PRAKRIT LITERATURE

1. As Saussure preferred to think of language in general: “language is a form and not a substance”(2011 [1959]: 122).

2. Busch 2011b: 6.–101.

3. See, e.g., Mark Twain’s “The Awful German Language”; David Sedaris, “Easy, Tiger” (New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2011, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/11/easy-tiger); and http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p = 23816. French and Italian have fared much better in terms of foreign-language clichés.

4. See the introduction.

5. Auerbach 1993 [1958]: 249.

6. Zumthor 1992 [1972]: 50; Swiggers 2009: 135.

7. Grierson 1927: 123, quoted in chapter 1.

8. Brilliance of the Connoisseurs, v. 5: siṃgāra-bhāva-suhaā sarasā varasuṃdari vva somālī | koḍḍa-maṇoraha-jaṇaṇī haraï maṇaṃ pāauttī hu ||.

9. Vajjālagga, v. 28: desiyasaddapaloṭṭaṃ mahurakkharachaṃdasaṃṭhiyaṃ laliyaṃ | phuḍaviyaḍapāyaḍatthaṃ pāiyakavvaṃ paḍheyavvaṃ ||. See also chapter 5 for a similar verse from the same collection. Patwardhan understands the Prakrit name Jayavallaha to represent Jayavallabha, but I think Jagadvallabha is more likely.

10. Not that Prakrit alone had “sweet syllables”: the phrase (madhurākṣara-) is used, e.g., of Siddhārtha’s speech (in Sanskrit) to his horse Kanthaka (Story of the Buddha 5.74).

11. See Tieken 2006, citing Treatise on Theater 16.104: bahuśo yac chrutaṃ vākyaṃ uktaṃ vā punaḥ punaḥ | nodvejayati yasmād dhi tan mādhuryam iti smṛtam ||.

12. Beames 1872: 223.

13. See Light on Prakrit 1.9 (ten words). I argued (2012) that jahā was metrically reshaped to jaha in order to fit into the optimal template of the moraic trochee.

14. See Light on Prakrit 1.2 (nine words, of which seven involve prefixes: sām-iddhi, pāḍi-siddhi, pā-siddhi, āhi-āa, pā-sutta, pāḍi-vaā, pā-aḍa; mānaṃsiṇī, from manasvinī, is almost certainly contaminated with māna-, and sārisa, from sadṛśa, has the typical lengthening of pronominal stems like mādṛśa-, tvādṛśa-, etc.). See Pischel 1896, 1897; Jacobi 1893, 1898 (also translated into English in Jacobi 1960).

15. The difference between the number of phonemes of Prakrit and the number of “root phonemes” (mūlākṣaras) of Sanskrit is noted, e.g., in the beginning of the recently discovered Praśnavyākaraṇa (see Acharya 2007), of which Jagat Ram Bhattacharya is currently preparing an edition.

16. In some manuscripts, only ṇ is written; in others, n is written when it stands at the beginning of a word or when doubled, and ṇ is written elsewhere.

17. See, in general, Bronner 2010. One example is sāraṅga in Kālidāsa’s Cloud Messenger, v. 21 (see Mallinātha’s comment thereon).

18. Ornament of Literature 2.19–21; Necklace of Sarasvatī 2.82–86. For Harivṛddha, see appendix C. For some comments on these modes, known as vṛttis to some authors, see Raghavan 1973.

19. Such as praüga- “foreyoke” and titaü- “sieve.”

20. Necklace of Sarasvātī 2, ex. 191 (p. 240) = Rāvaṇa’s Demise 1.56. I cite the verse from Rāvaṇa’s Demise because the text of the Necklace of Sarasvatī is very imperfect.

21. Commentary on the above-quoted verse in the Necklace of Sarasvatī (p. 240): seyaṃ mūrdhanyānāṃ prathama-caturtha-pañcama-dvitais tadāvṛttyā ca prāyo jāyate. The sound ṭ and ḍh, which seem to be specifically required by Bhoja’s characterization, are absent altogether from the verse he quotes, and the sound ṇ is repeated only in the word ṇisaṇṇa-.

22. Bhoja defines the ākṣiptikā dhruvā in his Necklace of Sarasvatī as a verse that serves to introduce a particular melody, and he cites a Prakrit gāthā as an example (Raghavan 1963: 370).

23. For example, Līlāvaī 66. kuvaī vi vallaho paṇaïāṇa taha ṇayavaro vi sāhasio | paraloya-bhīruo vi hu vīrekka-raso taha cceya ||. King Sātavāhana is described as “beloved to his wives, although he is a bad husband (or: lord of the earth); strenuously active, although his enemies have been humbled (or: devoted to statecraft); delighting in acts of valor, although afraid of the world beyond (or: afraid of rebirth in hell for conduct unbefitting to his life as a king).” For bitextual techniques such as “embrace” (śleṣa), and the poetic movements that formed around them, see Bronner 2010.

24. See, e.g., Collection of Mora- and Syllable-Counting Meters 4.29 (the other varieties are scattered throughout this chapter) and Teaching on Meter 4.25–28. Bhoja refers to an older view among scholars that the galitaka verses of the three major Prakrit court epics are interpolations. Hemacandra has reproduced Bhoja’s comment, although he takes Sarvasena to task for including pointless descriptions in the galitaka verses of Hari’s Victory, so we may assume that he did not subscribe to the view that the galitakas were interpolated. See Raghavan 1963: 802–803 and Teaching on Literature, pp. 461–462.

25. Rāvaṇa’s Demise 9.82 (reading rāaeṇa for Goldschmidt’s unmetrical rāeṇa). For yamaka, see Soehnen-Thieme 1995 and Tubb 2015. Kālidāsa’s systematic yamaka compositions in the Dynasty of Raghu, discussed by Tubb, may well be influenced by the systematic yamaka compositions found in earlier Prakrit court epics such as Hari’s Victory.

26. For the deśī vocabulary of Rāvaṇa’s Demise, see Roy 1998.

27. For the gāthā in Prakrit literature in general, see Vyas 1962: §§161–162. The Vajjālagga has a gāthāvrajyā (vv. 9–18 in Patwardhan’s edition), and the Treasury of Gāthā-Jewels has a section titled kāvyapraśaṃsā (vv. 19–29) that includes several verses about gāthās.

28. Pollock 2006a: 288.

29. Horsch 1966.

30. For Avestan verse, see most recently Kuemmel 2013. For Indo-European verse, see Meillet 1923, Kurylowicz 1970, and Nagy 1974.

31. Some authors counted 81,920,000 “surface forms” of the gāthā (Definition of the Gāthā 51. Mirror for Poets 2.6); others rightly disputed this number, because it did not take co-occurrence constraints into account (Govinda on Virahāṅka’s Collection of Mora- and Syllable-Counting Meters 4.107). See Cappeller 1872: 81–85 for examples of the manipulation of these possibilities for poetic effect.

32. See Ollett 2012. The general idea is that the gaṇa is parsed into moraic trochees (either a heavy syllable or two light syllables), and those gaṇas in which a moraic trochee begins on the first mora are unsyncopated, while those in which a moraic trochee begins on the second mora are syncopated.

33. See Ollett 2013 and also Cappeller 1872: 72–85, noting that Charles Philip Brown had jokingly translated these variants as Καλλιόπη, Καλλιπύγη, and Περικάλη in his Sanskrit Prosody and Numerical Symbols Explained (London: Tru¨bner, 1869). For Sanskrit verses that exemplify the jaghanacapalā pattern, see Emeneau 1955.

34. Brilliance of the Connoisseurs, v. 25 (folio 3). Rasas and bhāvas belong to the technical vocabulary of Indian aesthetic theory, on which see Pollock 2016.

35. Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 74–105; 1966, 1968; see also Bruhn 1996. On the old āryā, see Jacobi 1970 [1884]. Warder 1967 has a useful discussion of the gāthās in the Pali canon as a whole, but he does not elicit the consequences for internal chronology as clearly as Alsdorf. I do not, by the way, agree with all of Alsdorf’s conclusions—he sometimes argues that a text is later simply because it does not seem to represent “authentic” Buddhism or Jainism (Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 90–91)—but the general chronological scaffolding seems secure.

36. Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 74; Norman 1987.

37. See Jacobi 1970 [1884]; 1970 [1886]; Schubring 2004; Alsdorf 2006 [1965], 1966, 1968; Hart 1975; Norman 1987.

38. On Magadhan culture see Bronkhorst 2007.

39. Geiger 1956 [1916]; von Hinüber 1996.

40. The classic work on Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is Franklin Edgerton’s dictionary (1993 [1953]).

41. Vyas 1962 notes (§161): uttarī bhārat meṃ mātrik gāthāoṃ kā pracār īsvīṃ san ke śurū ke āspās kī den hai (“the proliferation of gaṇa-counting meters in North India is a contribution of around the beginning of the common era”).

42. Balbir 1993b: 5.‒55.

43. Punyavijaya 1968: 19‒20; see the discussion of “myths of continuity” in chapter 3.

44. See Charles Hallisey’s introduction (xxiii) to his translation of Songs of the Buddhist Nuns (2015); Lienhard 1975; Boccali 2007; Rossella 2011.

45. Rossella 2011: 7; K. R. Norman (300 BCE, cited in Hallisey’s translation of Songs of the Buddhist Nuns, p. xxxiii).

46. Smith 1949–1950.

47. The Definition of the Gāthā is dated to the tenth century or later, since in its present form it contains a quotation from Rājaśekhara’s Karpūramañjarī. But it also shares some verses with texts that are indisputably older (see appendix C), and “Nanditāḍhya” is cited by a commentator on ʿAbd ur-Raḥmān’s Message Poem for verse forms that are not discussed in the Definition in its present form. Probably there were several versions of Nanditāḍhya’s treatise.

48. See Velankar’s discussion in his introduction to the text (he considered them to be original).

49. Ratnāvalī 1.13–15; see Svayambhū’s Meters 4.1 (pūrvabhāga, p. 114). I have taken the reading from Svayambhū; editions of the Ratnāvalī I have consulted—no critical edition yet exists—read the language more in the convention of theatrical Prakrit (Śaurasenī).

50. Anuyogadvāra Sūtra 271. pariyarabaṃdheṇa bhaḍam jāṇejjā, mahiliyaṃ nivasaṇeṇaṃ | sittheṇa doṇapāgaṃ, kaviṃ ca egāi gāhāe ||.

51. See Bāṇa’s verse praising Seven Centuries (quoted in chapter 3), as well as Treasury of Gāthā-Jewels 2. V. 7 of Brilliance of the Connoisseurs is relevant here, and I provide the text because it has not yet been published: vimalo suvaṇṇa-gaḍhio ṇāṇālaṃkāra-bharia-bahalattho | vaïroaṇeṇa raïo gāhā-raaṇassa rehae koso |. The reading -raaṇāṇa makes better sense.

52. Mirror of Literature 1.13.

53. Read kośo ‘py anekabhinnārthagāthāgrathito gāthākośaḥ kṛṣṇasāraḥ tārāgaṇa iti with Upadhye 1974.

54. Bhoja, Illumination of the Erotic 11.353–354 (p. 674). Bhoja is followed by Hemacandra in his Teaching on Literature 8.12–13 (with the Crest-Jewel of Ornaments thereon), who also brings in Abhinavagupta’s remarks on the paryā/paryāya.

55. Acarya 1982: 128–154.

56. Ingalls 1965: 44–45. For Ravigupta’s little-known anthology of āryā verses, composed sometime before it was translated into Tibetan in the ninth century, see Hahn 2007.

57. On the Chappaṇṇayas, see Balbir and Besnard 1993–1994 and Bhayani 1993e.

58. Mirashi 1960b argued that the text was originally titled A Treasury of Gāthās (Gāthākośa); and see too Sohoni 1999; Acarya 1982: 56–57.

59. Joglekar 1946.

60. Tieken 1978; Schubring 1955. Balbir 1995 studied these formal structures as they are found in Jain literature and showed that they were known to Indian readers (as “chain-composition” or śṛṅkhalābandha).

61. Ornament of Literature 1.30.

62. See Bhayani 1993a on the Gāthāmuktāvalī and 1993b on vajjā/paryāya. The Sanskrit word vrajyā is a back-formation from the Prakrit vajjā.

63. Bappabhaṭṭi, Constellation v. 46: susiyattaṇa-bahulakkhaya-sirīsa-jaladugga-vāraṇārīhiṃ | gāhāhiṃ pasaṃsaṃtaṃ vādi kahaṃ taṃ pasaṃsemo ||. I have not translated the keywords because all of them involve double meanings.

64. So Bhayani (introduction to the Constellation, p. 7): “This was a traditional device to record and protect the authorship of stray verses.” See also Upadhye 1974.

65. Vv. 26 and 27 (folio 3).

66. Gadamer 2004 [1960]: 110–119; the (specious) distinction between meaning and significance is E. D. Hirsch’s (1967).

67. Ex. 36 on Mirror for Poets 2.8.7. See Bhayani 1993c.

68. Siddhahemacandra 8.1.187, about the transformation of aspirates into h (anāder ity eva, gajjaṃti khe mehā) and 8.3.132, about the use of ātmanepada endings. See also Bhayani 1998: no. 73.

69. Bhoja, Illumination of the Erotic 10.226 (p. 571; see also Kulkarni 1988: no. 136, p. 69); Necklace of Sarasvatī 3.153 (p. 383; see also Kulkarni 1988: no. 98, p. 359).

70. See v. 319 of the Prabandha of Pādalipta.

71. Svayambhū’s Meters 1.4 (pūrvabhāga) = W75: ua pommarāamaragaasaṃvaliā ṇahaalāu oaraï | ṇahasirikaṃṭhabbhaṭṭha vva kaṃṭhiā kīrariṃcholī ||. See Keith 1920: 223 n. 5; Tripathi 1984: 294; Winternitz 1985 [1920]: 114 n. 3; and, more optimistically, Pischel 1981 [1900]: §13.

72. Seven Centuries W394: maragaasūīviddhaṃ va mottiaṃ piaï āaaggīvo | moro pāusaāle taṇaggalaggaṃ uaaviṃduṃ ||.

73. Abhinavagupta, New Dramatic Art, v. 1, p. 281 (commentary on the rasasūtra): tadupajīvanena muktake, tathā ca tatra sahṛdayāḥ pūrvāparam ucitaṃ parikalpya īdṛg atra vaktāsminn avasare ityādi bahutaraṃ pīṭhabandharūpaṃ vidadhate, tena ye kāvyābhyāsaprāktanapuṇyādihetubalādibhiḥ sahṛdayās teṣāṃ parimitavibhāvādyunmīlane ’pi parisphuṭa eva sākṣātkārakalpaḥ kāvyārthaḥ sphurati. I follow the translation in Pollock 2016 in interpreting this passage.

74. In the commentary on verse 1.4c of Ānandavardhana’s Light on Suggestion.

75. On kiḷavis, see Wilden 2006: 158–185.

CHAPTER 5. FIGURING PRAKRIT

1. Sakai 2009: 83.

2. Jakobson 1959: 233.

3. Sakai 1997, 2009.

4. Sakai 2009.

5. Phaedrus 265e: τὸ πάλιν κατ᾽ εἴδη δύνασθαι διατέμνειν κατ᾽ ἄρθρα ᾗ πέφυκεν, καὶ μὴ ἐπιχειρεῖν καταγνύναι μέρος μηδέν, κακοῦ μαγείρου τρόπῳ χρώμενον “[the alternative to classing different elements together under classes is] being able to distinguish them again by their classes, where the joints are, and trying not to make a hack-job of any piece like a bad butcher.”

6. “Diese Vorstellung nun von einem allgemeinen Verfahren der Einbildungskraft, einem Begriff sein Bild zu verschaffen, nenne ich das Schema zu diesem Begriffe” (Kant 1998 [1787]: 242 = A140, B179). Cf. Brian Stock’s formulation (1998: 13): “A schema is a pattern of information already shaped in discursive or narrative form in the mind.”

7. As an example of the general kind of “mediating representations” that schemas provide, recall Goethe’s experiments with the “morphology” of plants. Goethe attempted to redescribe plants that he encountered in nature as formal or morphological modifications of each other, such that all plants could be related in this manner as modifications of an originary template (an Urpflanze). The template is the necessary starting point for any possible plant, which both bounds the category and encompasses all of its internal diversity. It is not a composite picture of actual plants, but a mediating representation: “if [Schiller] takes for an idea what to me is an experience,” Goethe wrote, “then there must, after all, prevail some mediation, some relationship between the two.” See Heller 1952: 5, cited in Monk 1990.

8. “Dieser Schematismus unseres Verstandes, in Ansehung der Erscheinungen und ihrer bloßen Form, ist eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele, deren wahre Handgriffe wir der Natur schwerlich jemals abraten, und sie unverdeckt vor Augen legen werden” (Kant 1998 [1787]: 242 = A141, B189).

9. To take just one example, the texts discussed in Deshpande 1993 largely belong to the period before “Sanskrit” and “Prakrit” were used as names of languages.

10. Pollock 1996, 2003, 2006a.

11. Sakai 2009.

12. Quoted in Kahrs 1992: 245 from Grierson’s review of Pischel’s Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen.

13. See Srimannarayana Murti 1993. According to traditional glosses. Mādhava’s Commentary on Verbal Roots glosses saṃskaroti as alaṃkaroti “adorn, elaborate” (p. 511). The Kāśī Commentary glosses the term saṃskāra several times as “attributing excellence to something that already exists” (sata utkarṣādhānaṃ saṃskāraḥ, e.g., on Aṣṭādhyāyī 4.4.3).

14. The word is derived from the base prakṛti with the suffix aṆ. The relevant sūtras are prāg dīvyato ’ṇ (4.1.83), tatra bhavaḥ (4.3.53), and tata āgataḥ (4.3.74). The difference in meaning between “existing in” or “come from” the source will be discussed below.

15. Pollock 2006a: 45.

16. Rāmāyaṇa 5.28.18–19ab: yadi vācaṃ pradāsyāmi dvijātir iva saṃskṛtām | rāvaṇaṃ manyamānā māṃ sītā bhītā bhaviṣyati || avaśyam eva vaktavyaṃ mānuṣaṃ vākyam arthavat |. See Cardona 1998: 646; von Hinüber 2001: §2.

17. Kloss 1967; Bronkhorst 2011: 15–18.

18. See Bakhtin 1981: 295, quoted at the beginning of chapter 3, and Pollock 2006a: 45.

19. Sthānāṅga Sūtra 553 (7.74), p. 674 l. 5 (sakkatā pāgatā ceva duvidhā bhaṇitīo āhitā); Anuyogadvāra Sūtra 260 (gāthā 53), p. 305 l. 3 (sakkayā pāyayā ceva bhaṇiīo hoṃti duṇṇi u). I would guess that these gāthās date to sometime between the second and the fourth century CE.

20. Birth of Kumāra 7.90 (in Kale’s edition with Mallinātha’s commentary) or 7.89 (in Murti’s edition with Vallabhadeva’s commentary): dvidhā prayuktena ca vāṅmayena sarasvatī tan mithunaṃ nunāva | saṃskārapūtena varaṃ vareṇyaṃ vadhūṃ sukhagrāhyanibandhanena ||.

21. Vallabha ad loc.: varaṃ pāṇigrahītāraṃ saṃskārapūtena saṃskṛtena, vadhūṃ tu sukhenākleśena grāhyaṃ bodhyaṃ nibandhanaṃ racanā yasya tena, prākṛtenety arthaḥ. Mallinātha quotes Vallabhadeva almost verbatim in his commentary to this verse.

22. Prakrit is “devoid of the quality of saṃskāra” in the Treatise on Theater, saṃskāra-guṇa-varjita. In On Sentence and Word 1.147, Bhartṛhari also defines a deviant form (apabhraṃśaḥ) as “devoid of saṃskāra“(śabdaḥ saṃskārahīno yo gaur iti prayuyukṣite | tam apabhraṃśam icchanti viśiṣṭārthaniveśanam ||), and we will see later that he framed this definition with Prakrit in mind.

23. Gauḍa’s Demise 65. ummillaï lāyaṇṇaṃ paaa-cchāyāe sakkaa-vaāṇaṃ | sakkaa-sakkārukkarisaṇeṇa paaassa vi pahāvo ||. I do not accept Leendert van Daalen’s translation of paaa as “the subject under discussion” and sakkaa “perfect” in Bodewitz and van Daalen 1998: 42–43. The word paaa can be derived from prākṛta by Vararuci’s rule ad āto yathādiṣu vā (Light on Prakrit 1.10), and his commentator Vasantarāja actually includes the word prākṛta- in the yathādi-gaṇa (see Resuscitation of Prakrit p. 13).

24. See, e.g., Līlāvatī, vv. 41–43. See also the passage from the Kuvalayamālā discussed below in the text.

25. The original text is quoted in chapter 3.

26. I thus understand all significations of the compound pāua-kavvaṃ at once: prākṛtānāṃ kāvyam, prākṛtaṃ cedaṃ kāvyaṃ ca, and prākṛtabhāṣāmayaṃ kāvyam.

27. Kāma Sūtra, p. 53: veśyābhavane sabhāyām anyatamasyodavasite vā samānavidyābuddhiśīlavittavayasāṃ saha veśyābhir anurūpair ālāpair āsanabandho goṣṭhī, tatra kāvyasamasyā kalāsamasyā vā. tasyām ujjvalā lokakāntāḥ pūjyāḥ, prītisamānāś cāhāritāḥ. See the discussion in chapter 3.

28. Ibid., p. 60: nātyantaṃ saṃskṛtenaiva nātyantaṃ deśabhāṣayā | kathāṃ goṣṭhīṣu kathayaṃl loke bahumato bhavet || (the verse is also quoted by Bhoja at Necklace of Sarasvatī 2.12, p. 142).

29. Yaśodhara’s comment (nātyantam iti, kaścid eva saṃskṛtaṃ vetti deśabhāṣāṃ ca) means that people who know both Sanskrit and the regional language are rare, and that one should switch between them in order to avoid boring or alienating those who only know one language. But the point of the verse as I understand it is that knowledge of both languages is normative.

30. Vajjālagga, v. 29: lalie mahurakkharae juvaījaṇavallahe sasiṃgāre | saṃte pāiyakavve ko sakkaï sakkayaṃ paḍhiuṃ ||. The same verse is quoted in the Treasury of Gāthā-Jewels, v. 20.

31. Karpūramañjarī 1.7 (p. 5 in the edition of Konow; Ghosh’s edition lacks this verse): parusā sakkaabandhā pāuabandho vi suumāro | purisamahilāṇaṁ jettiam ihantaraṃ tettiam imāṇaṃ ||.

32. Jayasiṃhasūri, Explanation of the Garland of Advice, p. 4: salalia-paya-saṃcārā payaḍiya-mayaṇā suvaṇṇa-rayaṇellā | marahaṭṭhayabhāsā kāmiṇī ya aḍavī ya rehaṃti ||.

33. Vajjālagga, v. 7: sakkayam asakkayaṃ pi hu attho soyārasaṃgamavaseṇa | appuvvarasavisesaṃ jaṇei jaṃ taṃ mahacchariaṃ ||.

34. Pollock 2006a: 50. Note that Pollock considers Sanskrit and “the Prakrits as we know them” to have been “equally high diglossically,” that is, jointly positioned far above the “protoregional speech forms.”

35. Govardhana, Seven Centuries of Āryās 52. vāṇī prākṛtasamucitarasā balenaiva saṃskṛtaṃ nītā | nimnānurūpanīrā kalindakanyeva gaganatalam ||. See Knutson 2014: 47–71 for more about Govardhana’s poetics. The verse was discussed by Pischel 1874: 31 and Weber 1881: xxvi.

36. Bhartṛhari, On Sentence and Word 1.154: daivī vāg vyatikīrṇeyam aśaktair abhidhātṛbhiḥ | anityadarśināṃ tv asmin vāde buddhiviparyayaḥ ||.

37. Bhartṛhari, Light on the Great Commentary: kecid evaṃ manyante. ya evaite prākṛtāḥ śabdāḥ ta evaite nityāḥ. prakṛtau bhavāḥ prākṛtāḥ (see Houben 1994a: 4; Kahrs 1992: 241).

38. Commentary (vṛtti) traditionally ascribed to Bhartṛhari on On Sentence and Word, p. 238: anityavādinas tu ye sādhūnāṃ dharmahetutvaṃ na pratipadyante, mallasamayādisadṛśīṃ sādhuvyavasthāṃ manyante, te prakṛtau bhavaṃ prākṛtaṃ sādhūnāṃ śabdānāṃ samūham ācakṣate. vikāras tu paścād vyavasthitaḥ yaḥ sabhinnabuddhibhiḥ puruṣaiḥ svarasaṃskārādibhir nirṇīyata iti: “But people who say that Sanskrit is non-eternal do not accept that correct words are a source of merit, and instead think that determining a word’s correctness, like scoring a wrestling match, depends on conventions. They explain Prakrit as a collection of correct words, since it ‘originates in the source.’ The modifications that confused people have subsequently imposed upon it are clearly perceptible in the cause of special accents and so on.” See Houben 1997: 337; Kahrs 1992: 24. Note, incidentally, that the anityadarśins referred to in On Sentence and Word 1.154 do not maintain that language as such is non-eternal, but only that the Sanskrit language is non-eternal, as against Houben 1994a: 7, 1997: 338 and Bronkhorst 1993: 407.

39. As maintained by Houben 1994a. Cf., e.g., the Jain monk Namisādhu’s discussion of Prakrit in his commentary (dated 1068) to Rudraṭa’s Ornament of Literature 2.12, as well as Prabhācandra’s attack on the position that only Sanskrit words properly denote their meanings in his Moon to the Night-Lily of Reasoning, discussed briefly in Dundas 1996.

40. Thus I disagree with Houben’s assertion that prākṛta in this context “may include all kinds of spoken and written prakritic languages and varieties... perhaps including those we would consider non-Indo-aryan” (Houben 1996: 185).

41. Karpūramañjarī 1.8 (Konow) or 1.7 (Ghosh): atthavisesā te ccia saddā te ccea pariṇamantā vi | uttiviseso kavvaṃ bhāsā jā hou sā hou ||.

42. The verse answers the producer’s question about why the author of the Karpūramañjarī “abandoned Sanskrit and started a work in Prakrit” (tā kiṃ ti sakkaaṃ pariharia pāiabandhe paaṭṭo kaī, Karpūramañjarī p. 3; Ghosh mistakenly reads pāīa-).

43. Treatise on Theater 14.2ab: vāci yatnas tu kartavyo nāṭyasyeṣā tanuḥ smṛtā |. Different are the minor forms (uparūpakāṇi), defined in later texts, which are “minor” precisely because they privilege song and dance over verbal representation.

44. The Treatise on Theater offers “the first fully enunciated theory of ‘Sanskrit’” (Ali 2004: 171) and contains “the first textual usage of the term Sanskrit to refer to a language or discrete style of speech” (ibid., n. 88; see also Srimannarayana Murti 1993). For a walk-through of the Treatise on Theater‘s account of language, see Lidova 2012.

45. The word pāṭhyam consists of the root paṭh (“in the sense of an audible voice,” vyaktāyāṃ vāci) followed by the kṛt suffix ṆyaT. New Dramatic Art, 2: 365–366: pāṭhaviśeṣam arhati, yatnena vā paṭhanīyaṃ, viśiṣṭena rūpeṇa vā paṭhanārhaṃ, āntaracittavṛttivaśād eva vā tathā paṭhituṃ śakyaṃ, ācāryayatnena vā paṭhanīyam iti pāṭhyam.

46. Treatise on Theater, 14.5ab: dvividhaṃ hi smṛtaṃ pāṭhyaṃ saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ tathā.

47. Ibid., 17.2: etad eva viparyastaṃ saṃskāraguṇavarjitam | vijñeyaṃ prākṛtaṃ pāṭhyaṃ nānāvasthāntarātmakam ||.

48. New Dramatic Art, 2: 366: tatra prākṛtasya sāmānyalakṣaṇam āha. saṃskṛtam eva saṃskāraguṇena yatnena parirakṣārūpeṇa varjitaṃ prākṛtaṃ, prakṛter asaṃskārarūpāyā āgatam.

49. Ibid.: nanv apabhraṃśānāṃ ko niyama ity āha—nānā yāny avasthāntarāṇi deśaviśeṣās teṣv ātmā niyatasvabhāvo yasyāṃ, deśaviśeṣeṣu prasiddhyā niyamitam ity eva saṃskṛtā eva vācakāḥ, anumānāt tv anye, te tv anyatve prasiddhiṃ gatā ity uktam. The word on which Abhinavagupta’s interpretation depends, avasthāntaram, is a generic description of internal differentiation in the Treatise on Theater and applies to everything from theater itself to moustaches.

50. Treatise on Theater 17.7: trividhaṃ tac ca vijñeyaṃ nāṭyayoge samāsataḥ | samānaśabdaṃ vibhraṣṭaṃ deśīgatam athāpi ca ||.

51. For the Prakrit verses quoted therein, see appendix C. Vv. 17.6–9 are Prakrit gāthās, parts of which are also quoted in the Definition of the Gāthā of Nanditāḍhya (date unknown) and the Dhavalā and Jayadhavalā commentaries by Vīrasena and Jinasena (composed in ninth-century Karnataka). They are likely adopted from an earlier grammar, possibly Harivṛddha’s (see chapter 5). Vv. 17.10–23 are composed in Sanskrit āryās. For more on the Treatise on Theater’s grammar of Prakrit see Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: 61–92.

52. Explanation of the System 1.3.6.12 (p. 237): māgadha-dākṣiṇātya-tad-apabhraṃśa-prāyāsādhu-śabda-nibandhanā hi te; later on in the same discussion (p. 239): kimuta yāni prasiddhāpabhraṣṭadeśabhāṣābhyo ’py apabhraṣṭatarāṇi bhikkhave ity evamādīni, dvitīyābahuvacanasthāne hy ekārāntaṃ prākṛtaṃ padaṃ dṛṣṭaṃ, na prathamābahuvacane saṃbodhane ’pi [we observe the ending -e in a Prakrit word in the accusative plural, but not in the nominative plural or the vocative], saṃskṛtaśabdasthāne ca kakāradvayasaṃyogo ‘nusvāralopaḥ, ṛvarṇākārāpattimātram eva prākṛtāpabhraṃśeṣu dṛṣṭaṃ na ḍakārāpattir api. See also Yoshimizu 2015: 53–54, who reconstructs the passage that Kumārila cites as follows: [ya]thā ukkhitte loḍammi ukkheve atthi kāraṇam | paḍaṇe ṇatthi kāraṇam aṇ[ṇaṃ] ubbhavakāraṇ[āt] || [I would read kāraṇā] [ev’]ime sakkaḍā dhammā [I would read saṃkaḍā] saṃbhavanti sakāraṇā | akāraṇā viṇas[s]anti aṇ[ṇam] uppattikāraṇāt || [again kāraṇā is to be preferred].”

53. Lüders 1911.

54. Ghose 1932, 1933.

55. Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: 82 = §325.

56. New Dramatic Art, 2: 371–372: muninā ca dig darśitā, vistāravijijñāsuḥ prākṛtadīpikādikam avalokayet. utpalaviracitāyāṃ ca sūtravṛttau paddhatau ca sphutaṃ pūrṇaṃ ca sarvam astīti tatrādaraḥ kāryaḥ. See Raghavan 1980 for a short note on Abhinavagupta’s knowledge of Prakrit grammar.

57. “The term prākṛtam, as referring to the totality of literary Prakrits, which are opposed as a whole to the saṃskṛtam, should therefore have arisen in dramatic theory” (Pisani 1957: 188).

58. As noted first by Alsdorf 1975 [1941].

59. Treatise on Theater 17.25: bhāṣācaturvidhā jñeyā daśarūpe prayogataḥ | saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ caiva yatra pāṭhyaṃ prayujyate ||.

60. This is Abhinavagupta’s interpretation in New Dramatic Art, 2: 372: saṃskṛtaprākṛtarūpaiva bhāṣā vaktṛbhedāc caturvidhā saṃpanneti darśayati saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ ca pāṭhyam iti.

61. Abhinavagupta mentions one interpretation, which he does not agree with, according to which “superlanguage” differs from “noble language” in the same way that Vedic Sanskrit differs from classical Sanskrit: vaidikaśabdabāhulyād āryabhāṣāto vilakṣaṇatvam asyā ity kecit (ibid.)

62. See Nitti-Dolci’s translation (1972 [1938]: 61–92).

63. Treatise on Theater 17.46: athavā chandataḥ kāryā deśabhāṣā prayoktṛbhiḥ | nānādeśasamutthaṃ hi kāvyaṃ bhavati nāṭake ||.

64. I take 17.45, which assigns Śaurasenī to śuddhajāti characters, to belong to this section.

65. Ten Forms 2.64–66: pāṭhyaṃ tu saṃskṛtaṃ nṝṇāṃ anīcānāṃ kṛtātmanāṃ | liṅginīnāṃ mahādevyā mantrijāveśyayoḥ || strīṇāṃ tu prākṛtaṃ prāyaḥ śauraseny adhameṣu ca | piśācātyantanīcādau paiśācaṃ māgadhaṃ tathā || yaddeśaṃ nīcapātraṃ yat taddeśaṃ tasya bhāṣitam | kāryataś cottamādīnāṃ kāryo bhāvavyatikramaḥ ||.

66. Treatise on Theater 17.62: atra noktaṃ mayā yat tu lokād grāhyam budhais tu tat; Rajendran 2005: 219.

67. This point was obvious to D. D. Kosambi (1963: 180).

68. New Dramatic Art, pp. 376–377: sā [sc. vibhāṣā] tattaddeśa eva gahvaravāsināṃ prākṛtavāsināṃ ca, etā eva nāṭye tu.

69. Bhavabhūti, Mālatī and Mādhava 6.10: sarale sāhasarāgaṃ parihara rambhoru muñca saṃrambham | virasaṃ virahāyāsaṃ soḍhuṃ tava cittam asahaṃ me || (“You simple girl, give up your love of excitement. Forget your rash enthusiasm, love. It is horribly worrying, this separation of yours: my heart cannot bear it.”)

70. Treatise on Theater 17.56: na barbarakirātāndhradramilādyāsu jātiṣu | nāṭyaprayoge kartavyaṃ kāvyaṃ bhāṣāsamāśritam || (ed. -ānghra-, impossibly). This is the original context of the verse, which appears earlier as 17.44.

71. See chapter 7. For Amitagati’s Sanskrit translation of the Dharmaparīkṣā in the eleventh century, see p. 91 of Upadhye’s introduction to the Kuvalayamālā. There are earlier works, such as Raviṣeṇa’s Legend of Padma (678 CE), which may be considered translations lato sensu, but are better considered independent retellings (in this case of the Deeds of Padma by Vimala Sūri).

72. Verses of the Chappaṇṇayas, v. 45: jo sakkayaṃ na yāṇai suvisuddha-pāiyaṃ pi vottuṃ-je | moṇaṃ tu tassa saraṇaṃ, nīsaraṇaṃ ahava parisāe ||. The last part is a play on words, remarked upon by Balbir and Besnard (1993–1994), meaning both “or, he can leave the assembly altogether” (nīsaraṇaṃ from niḥsaraṇam) and “or otherwise it’s a disaster for the assembly” (nīsaraṇaṃ from niḥśaraṇam).

73. See the verse quoted above from the Vajjālagga (“Sanskrit or other than Sanskrit”) and compare Bhāmaha’s Ornament of Literature 1.28cd (saṃskṛtāsaṃskṛtā ceṣṭā kathāpabhraṃśabhāk tathā).

74. See Bronner 2012 on the dates of Bhāmaha and Daṇḍin, and see Pollock 2006a: 9.–93 on their discussion of literary language.

75. Ornament of Literature 1.16cd: saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ cānyad apabhraṃśa iti tridhā.

76. Mirror of Literature 1.10: taiḥ śarīraṃ ca kāvyānāmalaṅkāraśca darśitaḥ | śarīraṃ tāvad iṣṭārthavyavacchinnā padāvalī ||.

77. Ibid., 32: tad idaṃ vāṅmayaṃ bhūyaḥ saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ tathā | apabhraṃśaś ca miśraṃ cety āhur āptāś caturvidham ||.

78. See Bakhtin 1981: 4.

79. See Analysis of Literature pp. 5–10, and cf. Vāgbhaṭa’s Ornament 2.1 (influenced by Rājaśekhara’s formulation): saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ tasyāpabhraṃśo bhūtabhāsitam | iti bhāśāś catasro ’pi yānti kāvyasya kāyatām ||.

80. Pollock 2006a: 112.

81. Ornament of Literature 1.30ab: anibaddhaṃ punar gāthāślokamātrādi tat punaḥ (note that gāthās are in Prakrit, ślokas are in Sanskrit, and mātrās are in Apabhramsha); Mirror of Literature 1.37: saṃskṛtaṃ sargabandhādi prākṛtam skandhakādi yat | osarādir apabhraṃśo nāṭakādi tu miśrakam ||.

82. The verbal root saṃ-khyā means “to enumerate,” and pari-saṃ-khyā means “to exclude.” See Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.2.42 (parisaṃkhyā).

83. Ocean of the Rivers of Story 1.6.147–148: śrutvaivaitad asaṃbhāvyaṃ tam avocam ahaṃ ruṣā | ṣaḍbhir māsais tvayā devaḥ śikṣitaś cet tato mayā || saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ tadvad deśabhāṣā ca sarvadā | bhāṣātrayam idaṃ tyaktaṃ yan manuṣyeṣu saṃbhavet ||. Sten Konow (1894: 477) was one of the first to appreciate the importance of this passage.

84. The language of the ghouls is called the “fourth” at Ocean of the Rivers of Story 1.7.29, when Guṇāḍhya greets Kaṇabhūti (dṛṣṭvā tvāṃ svāgataṃ kṛtvā caturthyā bhūtabhāṣayā).

85. Charles Malamoud (1981: 36) showed that the final element is a “residue defined negatively by the absence of a characteristic common to the first three terms.” His example is the list of varṇas, where the fourth varṇa, the Śūdra, is defined by the absence of the ritual entitlements that make each of the first three varṇas “twice-born.”

86. Rājaśekhara, preface to Young Rāmāyaṇa, v. 11: giraḥ śravyā divyāḥ prakṛtimadhurāḥ prākṛtadhurāḥ subhavyo ’pabhraṃśaḥ sarasaracanaṃ bhūtavacanam | vibhinnāḥ panthānaḥ kim api kamanīyāś ca ta ime nibaddhā yas tv eṣāṃ sa khalu nikhile ‘smin kavivṛṣā || (cited in the introduction to Analysis of Literature, p. xliii, and also quoted by Bhoja at Necklace of Sarasvatī 2.17, p. 143).

87. Karpūramañjarī, p. 3: savva-bhāsā-cadureṇa. I doubt that Rājaśekhara had ever personally seen a single work in the language he called Paishachi.

88. Mirror of Literature 1.34: mahārāṣṭrāśrayāṃ bhāṣāṃ prakṛṣṭaṃ prākṛtaṃ viduḥ | sāgaraḥ sūktaratnānāṃ setubandhādi yanmayam ||.

89. Ibid., 35: saurasenī ca gauḍī ca lāṭī cānyā tādṛśī | yāti prākṛtam ity eva vyavahāreṣu sannidhim ||. See Pollock 2006a: 91.

90. Uddyotana, Kuvalayamālā, p. 70, §137: āyaṇṇiūṇa ya ciṃtiyaṃ ṇeṇa, ‘are, kayarīe uṇa bhāsāe eyaṃ ullaviyaï keṇāvi kiṃ pi? hūṃ, are sakkayaṃ tāva ṇa hoi. jeṇa taṃ aṇeya-paya-samāsa-ṇivāovasagga-vibhatti-liṃga-pariyappaṇā-kuviyappa-saya-duggamaṃ dujjaṇa-hiyayaṃ piva visamaṃ. imaṃ puṇa ṇa erisaṃ. tā kiṃ pāyayaṃ hojja? huṃ, taṃ pi ṇo, jeṇa taṃ sayala-kalā-kalāva-mālā-jala-kallola-saṃkula-loya-vuttaṃta-mahoyahi-mahāpurisa-mahaṇuggayāmaya-ṇīsaṃda-biṃdu-saṃdohaṃ saṃgghaḍiya-ekkekkama-vaṇṇa-paya-ṇāṇārūva-virayaṇā-sahaṃ sajjaṇa-vayaṇaṃ piva suha-saṃgayaṃ. eyaṃ puṇa ṇa suṭṭhu. tā kiṃ puṇa avahaṃsaṃ hohii? hūṃ, taṃ pi ṇo, jeṇa sakkaya-pāyaobhaya-suddhāsuddha-paya-sama-visama-taraṃga-raṃgata-vaggiraṃ ṇava-pāusa-jalaya-pavāha-pūra-pavvāliya-giri-ṇai-sarisaṃ sama-visamaṃ paṇaya-kuviya-piya-paṇaïṇī-samullāva-sarisaṃ maṇoharaṃ. eyaṃ puṇa ṇa suṭṭhu...’

91. It is not certain that the author of Rogue Stories (Dhūrtākhyāna) is identical to the Haribhadra that Uddyotana identifies as his teacher.

92. Uddyotana, Kuvalayamālā, pp. 152–153 (§246). Other examples are given in Upadhye’s useful introductory note (pp. 77ff.).

93. Ibid., p. 16, §40: keettha pāyaya-pāḍhayā, keittha sakkaya-pāḍhayā, aṇṇe avabbhaṃsa-jāṇiṇo.

94. Deeds of Padma 1.2.3: sakkaẏa-pāẏaẏa-puliṇālaṅkiẏa (sc. rāmakahā-ṇaï eha kamāgaẏa at the beginning of this kaḍavaka).

95. Deeds of King Vikramāṅka 18.6: brūmaḥ sārasvata-kula-bhuvaḥ kiṃ nidheḥ kautukānāṃ tasyānekādbhuta-guṇa-kathā-kīrṇa-karṇāmṛtasya | yatra strīṇām api kim aparaṃ janma-bhāṣāvad eva pratyāvāsaṃ vilasati vacaḥ saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ ca ||.

96. Adapted from Williams 1983: 90. Bilhaṇa’s fondness for the term janmabhāṣā qualifies the claim that “the concept of a mother tongue is a foreign, post-nineteenth century idea in India” (Narayana Rao 2003: 425).

97. Mirror of Literature 1.36cd: śāstre tu saṃskṛtād anyad apabhraṃśatayoditam. The best short introduction to Apabhramsha is Bhayani 1989; Siṃh 1971 [1952] includes a more comprehensive survey.

98. Mirror of Literature 1.36ab: ābhīrādigiraḥ kāvyeṣv apabhraṃśa iti smṛtāḥ. For the Ābhīras, see Sircar 1939: 242; Prakash 1954; and Suryavanshi 1962, and for their connection to Apabhramsha, see Tagare 1942.

99. See Ratnaśrījñāna on Mirror of Literature 1.36 (p. 25): apabhraṃśo ‘pi prākṛtavac caturdhā smaryate. yad uktam—śabdabhavaṃ śabdasamaṃ deśīyaṃ sarvaśabdasāmānyam | prākṛtavad apabhraṃśaṃ jānīhi caturvidham āhitam || iti.

100. Message Poem, vv. 4, 6 (see the references in chapter 1).

101. Tieken 2008.

102. New Dramatic Art, p. 376. One of the “sublanguages” is Ābhīrī, which is named for one of the same communities with which Daṇḍin would associate literary Apabhramsha.

103. See Illumination of the Erotic, chap. 3, pp. 164–166 (translated at Pollock 2006a: 58.–582).

104. Pollock 2006a: 133.

105. Narayana Rao 1995: 34–35.

106. For a longer discussion of Paishachi, see Ollett 2014, the key points of which are summarized here; the major contributions to the question include Grierson 1906; Lacôte 1908; Master 1943; Sani 1985; Hinüber 1981, 1985.

107. Barth 1885: 277 [457], lviii C15).

108. See Govardhana, Seven Centuries of Āryās, v. xxxiv: śrīrāmāyaṇabhāratabṛhatkathānām kavīn namaskurmaḥ | trisrotā iva sarasā sarasvatī sphurati yair bhinnā ||.

109. In Sanskrit: the Ocean of the Rivers of Story by Somadeva, the Cluster of Blossoms from the Great Story by Kṣemendra, and Verse Summary of the Great Story (Bṛhatkathāślokasaṅgraha) by Budhasvāmin, for all of which see Lacôte 1908. In Tamil: the Great Story (Peruṅkatai), for which see Vijayalakshmy 1978, 1981, 1982. In Prakrit: the Wanderings of Vasudeva by Saṅghadāsa, for which see Jain 1977.

110. Uttanūr plates of Durvinīta (Ramesh 1984: 82): devabhāratīnibaddhavaḍḍhakathena.

111. Mirror of Literature 1.38cd: bhūtabhāṣāmayīṃ tv āhur adbhutārthā bṛhatkathā, accepting the variant tv āhur with Ratnaśrījñāna instead of prāhur.

112. See Way of the Poet-King v. 1.41: sakkadamuṃ pāgadamum ad’ akkuṃ bagedante samaṟi pēḻal munnaṃ: “From time immemorial, Sanskrit and Prakrit could be used for refined compositions, as one sees fit.”

113. Ponna in his Śāntipurāṇa (pēḻva mūṟuvare bhāṣegaḷam; see Rice 1882: 301) and Nāgavarman in his Ocean of Meters: saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtam apabhraṃśaṃ paiśācikam emba mūṟuvare bhāṣegaḷoḷ (Master 1943: 43–44; Pollock 2006a: 370).

114. Kuvayalamālā §7, p. 4 l. 12: koūhaleṇa katthaï para-vayaṇa-vaseṇa sakkaya-ṇibaddhā | kiṃci avabbhaṃsa-kayā dāviya-pesāya-bhāsillā ||.

115. Ornament of Literature 2.12: prākṛta-saṃskṛta-māgadha-piśācabhāṣāś ca sūrasenī | ṣaṣṭho ‘tra bhūribhedo désaviśeṣād apabhraṃśaḥ ||. See Jacobi 1918: 81*, who also noted that Rudraṭa was the first to express the idea of the “six languages.”

116. See Hahn 2012, and see the verse of Bhavabhūti cited above.

117. One of Bhoja’s examples (Necklace of Sarasvatī 2 ex. 164) praises Viṣṇu (in Sanskrit) and Śiva (in Paishachi) simultaneously: rucirañjitārihetiṃ jananamitaṃ sāmakāyamakalaṅkam | santamamitaṃ ca mānaya kamalāsanamabhivirājantam || (for a translation, see Ollett 2014: 444–445).

118. This common knowledge is contained in the following verse: saṃskṛtaṃ prākṛtaṃ caivāpabhraṃśo ’tha piśācikī | māgadhī śaurasenī ca ṣaḍbhāṣāś ca prakīrtitāḥ ||. It appears in some manuscripts of the Definition of Prakrit ascribed to Caṇḍa (see Hoernle’s ed., p. 52) as well as Amaracandra’s Commentary on the Wish-Granting Vine of Literature (p. 8).

119. See Tieken 2001 on the invention of a Tamil literary tradition under the Pāṇṭiyas. This marks a radical break with preceding language practices and linguistic imaginaries, despite claims that “political Tamil” existed under the Pallavas as well (Francis 2013).

120. Ravikara (also known as Śrīpati) quotes the following verse at the beginning of his commentary on the Prakrit Piṅgala that equates regional languages and Apabhramsha: deśabhāṣāṃ tathā kecid apabhraṃśaṃ vidur budhāḥ | saṃskṛte prākṛte vāpi rūpasūtrānurodhataḥ | apabhraṃśaḥ sa vijñeyo bhāṣā yā yatra laukikī ||.

CHAPTER 6. KNOWING PRAKRIT

1. On Hemacandra’s career and the probable sequence of his works, see Bühler 1936.

2. A reading list on the disciplinary identity of philology would start with Pollock 2009 and Pollock, Elman, and Chang 2014. I find Auerbach’s (1961 [1948]: 9–37) description of the discipline to be the most straightforward (I owe my acquaintance with this text to Yashin 2011). On philology in India, see Ciotti 2013: 29–34; Pollock 2014; Cox 2016.

3. As done, e.g., by Subrahmanyam 2011. For “model of” and “model for,” see Geertz 1993 [1973].

4. “Centripetal” is a term of Bakhtin’s (1981); see also Crowley 1996: 39ff., and for general surveys, Joseph 2004, 2006.

5. For the idea of grammars of culture, see Pollock 1985, 1989.

6. The distinction between interlingual and intralingual is based on Jakobson 1959.

7. See Joseph 2006: 19: “Grammarians don’t ‘discover’ verb conjugations; neither do they invent them out of whole cloth; we don’t actually have a word for what they do.”

8. Pischel 1981 [1900]: §34; Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938].

9. In the following I make a few meager additions to the material gathered by H. C. Bhayani (1975 [reprinted in his Indological Studies in 1993] and 1997).

10. Vaidya 1926–1927: 66.

11. Svayambhū quotes a verse of Hāla as an example of the śārdūlavikrīḍita verse form at 1.47.2 of his Meter, and a verse of Sālāhaṇa as an example of the udgīti verse form at 1.4.2 (pūrvabhāga). He also refers to the dhavalas of Sālāhaṇa at 8.18. Virahāṅka refers to Sālāhaṇa as an authority (along with Bhuaāhiva = Bhujagādhipa and Vuḍḍhakaï = Vṛddhakavi, see below in text) on dvipadī, a kind of strophic form, at Collection of Mora- and Syllable-Counting Meters 2.8–9.

12. See River of Amazement, p. 102 (madhye syād antarantareti śālivāhanaḥ; antarantarā is used in a Sanskrit verse, but Ghanaśyāma often quotes Sanskrit lexica to explain Prakrit words, and I see no reason why the reverse should not be true), p. 117 (ettaham etta-tthaṇīti śālivāhanaḥ), and p. 157 (milāamāṇety etat hasamāṇā hasantī ca hasamāṇeti dig iti prākrṭacandrikāyāṃ śālivāhanokteḥ sādhīyaḥ). As noted in chapter 1, the River of Amazement is ascribed to Ghanaśyāma’s wives Sundarī and Kamalā.

13. On points of Prakrit grammar Ghanaśyāma defaults to Vararuci’s Light on Prakrit, which was presumably more comprehensive.

14. All of the Prakrit-language fragments of Prakrit grammars discovered to date are collected in appendix C (Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: §845 referred to them as “some āryās on grammatical generalities and some isolated sūtras”). Harivṛddha and Sātavāhana are mentioned together in a verse quoted by Bhoja (in both the Necklace of Sarasvatī and the Illumination of the Erotic), in a passage from Rājaśekhara’s Karpūramañjarī, and in the Collection of Mora- and Syllable-Counting Meters, which are given as testimonia in the aforementioned appendix. See also Bhayani 1975. The name “Old Hari” also provides some slight evidence for the poet’s antiquity. For the date of the Definition of the Gāthā, see the discussion in chapter 4.

15. Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: 221–222 = §845.

16. The similarities between the Mirror and Bhāmaha’s Ornament indicate a direct borrowing, and there are arguments to be made that Bhāmaha borrowed from the Mirror rather than the other way around.

17. For Svayambhū see Bhayani 1989: 26–28. Svayambhū’s ninth-century date is based on a reference to the Seuṇas, who formed their own polity in the region of present-day Pune only in the second quarter of the ninth century. For Virahāṅka, see Velankar’s introduction, §20.

18. Later biographies attribute his use of this signature to the suicidal depression that he felt after the death of two of his nephews (Granoff 1989a: 109); for Haribhadra’s date see Jinavijaya 1988 [1919] and Williams 1965. The twelfth-century commentator on the Collection, Gopāla, provides no information about Virahāṅka.

19. See the introduction to the Prakrit Lakṣmī by Bühler and Klatt 1879.

20. See Renou 1938: 167: “il est devenu courant, à partir d’une certaine époque, de citer «honoris causa» des grammariens, soit fictifs, soit du moins n’ayant eu aucune part dans la confection des sūtra où leur nom est allégué” [it became standard, starting from a certain time, to cite some grammarians honoris causa who were either fictional or at least had no part in producing the sūtras that bear their name].

21. Upadhye 1941b, 1956.

22. See Raghavan 1950 and Pischel 1981 [1900]: §31. The fragments quoted by Malayagiri are the very un-Pāṇinian vyatyayo ’py āsām (sc. vibhaktīnām) and liṅgaṃ vyabhicāry api. Konow (1894) believed that Pāṇini really did write a Prakrit grammar.

23. See pp. 124–130 of Acharya’s edition of Mārkaṇḍeya’s Sum-Total of Prakrit.

24. See seminal discussion of the Light on Prakrit in Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938], with the observation that the text was often simply called the Prākṛtasūtras by (some) premodern authors. Westergaard (1862: 82–88) lists nine different Kātyāyanas. Kātyāyana as a minister of Nanda appears in the Kalpanāmaṇḍatikā of Kumāralāta (Lévi 1908, who incorrectly attributed the text to Aśvaghoṣa), Ocean of the Rivers of Story of Somadeva, Avantisundarī, and the Jain niryuktis discussed by Balbir 1989: 513. For Both Go to Meet, see Venkatacharya (1968); for Gāthāśataka, extant only in Tibetan translation, see Hahn 1983. For the traditions that identify Vararuci with the grammarian Kātyāyana, see Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: 2; Scharfe 1977: 162; Bloch 1893: 9; and A Cluster of Blossoms vv. 3–4 on 1.1, as well as the Ocean of the Rivers of Story 1.2.1: nāmnā vararuciḥ kiṃ ca kātyāyana iti śrutaḥ.

25. See Gornall 2014: 530 for a “broader ‘grammatisation’” that includes Pali.

26. Pollock 2006a: 16.–171. Kumāralāta is, incidentally, the earliest source for the legend of Vararuci-Kātyāyana in his Kalpanāmaṇḍatikā.

27. On the topical organization of the Kātantra, see Liebich 1919: 10. The list of topics, however, is very different: the Kātantra deals with sandhi, nouns, and verbs; the Light with the transformations affecting vowels, single consonants, conjunct consonants, then a “mixed” set of rules, and then nominal morphology, verbal morphology, verbal roots, and indeclinables. See the opening verse of the Resuscitation of Prakrit. For taddhita suffixes in the Kātantra see Cardona 2008. For the overlap in technical terminology (āmantraṇa- for “vocative,” bhūta- for “past,” bhaviṣyat- for “future,” etc.), see Renou 1938: 164–165. An early lexicon was also ascribed to Vararuci (Liebich 1919: 12).

28. Alsdorf 1975 [1941]: 140, following Nitti-Dolci, summarizes the Light‘s importance as follows: “Auf Vararucis Beschreibung der Māhārāṣṭrī gehen die Māhārāṣṭrī-Abschnitte sämtlicher andern Grammatiken zurück, auch Hemacandras, auch der östlichen: Vararuci spielt hier eine Rolle, die cum grano salis der Pāṇinis für das Sanskrit vergleichbar ist” [the Māhārāṣṭrī sections of all the other grammarians go back to Vararuci’s description, including Hemacandra’s and the eastern grammarians: Vararuci plays a role here that is more or less comparable to Pāṇini’s for Sanskrit]. Similarly, Renou 1938: 160. Alsdorf’s emphasis is directed against Grierson, who believed that Vararuci belonged exclusively to the “eastern” school of Prakrit grammarians.

29. Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: §269, §272, §275. This was already obvious to Bloch (1893: 11–12): “Jedenfalls ist es klar, dass Vararucis regeln sich auf die sprache der Mahārāshṭrī-literatur beziehen, und da Hāla von anfang an als standard werk dieser poesie galt, wird er sicher auch einbegriffen werden müssen” [in any case it is clear that Vararuci’s rules are confined to the language of Mahārāṣṭrī literature, and since Hāla was the standard work of this poetry from the beginning, he surely must have been included as well].

30. Light on Prakrit 6.23 (īa bhūte); Alsdorf 1936: 325; Balbir 1989: 510.

31. Light on Prakrit 5.92 (ṅau ca maï mae); Esposito 2011: 37.

32. Jacobi 1908–1909.

33. Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: §273. The best reference remains the conspectus edition of Baladeva Upādhyāya (1972), which prints the recensions of Vasantarāja (and the anonymous Cluster of Blossoms) and Bhāmaha separately.

34. New Dramatic Art, 4: 385 (comm. on 32.382): apare vararucyādipraṇītaprākṛtalakṣaṇānvitaṃ śaurasenyādideśabhāṣādyatiriktaṃ prākṛtam evārdhasaṃskṛtaṃ iti manyante. This confirms that the version of Light known to Abhinavagupta did not define Śaurasenī; Bhāmaha’s commentary also does not extend to the chapter on Śaurasenī.

35. See the introduction to Ghosh’s edition of the Wish-Granting Tree of Prakrit (pp. xvii–xviii) for further arguments against the identification of Bhāmaha with the Kashmiri poetician. For Abhinavagupta’s remarks, see New Dramatic Art on Treatise on Theater 17.17 (p. 372).

36. See the chapter on the eastern grammarians in Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938], who edited Puruṣottama’s Prakrit grammar.

37. Alsdorf 1975 [1941]: 141; Upadhye 1941b: 169 n. 27; Ghosal 1969. See also Upadhye 1931–1932: 51, who expected the Jain monk Śubhacandra (sixteenth-century Rajasthan) to discuss Jain varieties of Prakrit and was disappointed.

38. Upadhye 1941b: 171 calls Grierson a “sentimental propagandist of his terminology.”

39. Nitti-Dolci 1972 [1938]: §§415ff.

40. Grierson imagined the history of Prakrit grammar to be an elaboration of two contraposed “base texts,” Vararuci in the east and Hemacandra in the west, as noted above. But even Nitti-Dolci comes close to suggesting that there were “two independent theories” of Prakrit, as Renou 1938: 161 points out.

41. Treatise on Theater 17.3; Mirror of Literature 1.33ff. with Ratnaśrījñāna’s commentary. See appendix C for these passages.

42. Ratnaśrījñāna’s commentary on the Mirror of Literature, p. 23: tataścaikaprakāraṃ saṃskṛtaṃ, prākṛtaṃ tv anekaprakāram. Somewhat later in the tenth century, Dhanika uses almost exactly the same words in his commentary to Ten Forms 2.65ab (p. 132): tadbhavaṃ tatsamaṃ deśīty anekaprakāraṃ prākṛtam.

43. I use Daṇḍin’s terminology only because it has become the most commonly cited. Harivṛddha uses saddasama, and Bharata samānaśabda, for Daṇḍin’s tatsama; for tadbhava, Harivṛddha has saddabhava and Bharata has vibhraṣṭa; for deśī, Harivṛddha has desī and Bharata has deśīgata. For other synonyms of these words see Acharya’s introduction (p. 56) to his edition of the Sum-Total of Prakrit. I use the term “derived” as a functional description of the category. E. G. Kahrs (1992) protests too much that “tadbhava in the sense of ‘derived from Sanskrit’ was a feat of Western authors” (245), since “derivation”—not necessarily in the sense of descent through time, but in the sense of systematic transformation through grammatical rules—is precisely what the category refers to, especially in its synonyms vibhraṣṭa-, vikārin-, tajja-, etc. See also Pollock 2004: n. 19.

44. Masica 1991: 65, referring to Vertogradova 1978.

45. The “meta-linguistic” character of the tatsama–tadbhava–deśī distinction has been obvious to scholars such as Lisa Mitchell (2009: 103).

46. Masica 1991: 65–66, noting that R. L. Turner criticized the use of this terminology in his Gune lectures.

47. See Drocco 2012.

48. Kahrs 1992; I agree fully with Houben’s (1994b) response.

49. Commentary on Rudraṭa’s Ornament of Literature2.12: sakalajagajjantūnāṃ vyākaraṇādibhir anāhitasaṃskāraḥ sahajo vacanavyāpāraḥ prakṛtiḥ, tatra bhavaṃ saiva vā prākṛtam.

50. Garland of Regional Nouns 1.4: aṇāipāiyapayaṭṭabhāsā-.

51. Namisādhu does so only indirectly, since Prakrit is not one of the languages for which he gives explicit rules: he notes that the rules he supplies for the other languages involve “exceptions” (apavādas) to the rules that operate on Prakrit, which in turn relate Prakrit to Sanskrit. One example is that “in Paiśācikā, there is no elision of the letters k, g, c, j, t, d, p, and y” (tathā kagacajatadapayādīnāṃ paiśācikyāṃ svaraśeṣābhāvo ‘’bhihitaḥ), implying that such an elision does obtain in Prakrit.

52. Siddhahemacandra on 8.1.1: prakṛtiḥ saṃskṛtaṃ, tatrabhavaṃ tata āgataṃ vā prākṛtaṃ. saṃskṛtānantaraṃ prākṛtam adhikriyate. saṃskṛtāntaraṃ ca prākṛtasyānuśāsanaṃ siddha-sādhyamāna-bheda-saṃskṛta-yoner eva tasya lakṣaṇaṃ, na deśyasyeti jñāpanārthaṃ. saṃskṛtasamaṃ tu saṃskṛtalakṣaṇenaiva gatārthaṃ. prākṛte ca prakṛti-pratyaya-liṅga-kāraka-samāsa-saṃjñādayaḥ samṣkṛtavad veditavyāḥ. See Pischel 1981 [1900]: §8 for the meaning of siddha and sādhyamāna in this context.

53. The reference is to Pāṇini’s sūtras 4.3.53 and 4.3.74; see Kahrs 1992, also discussing this passage in detail. I agree with Kahrs that his alternative translation (“like [the body of rules] for the origin”) is “less convincing.”

54. Resuscitation of Prakrit on Light on Prakrit 4.35. Mārkaṇḍeya divides Prakrit into Sanskrit-identical and Sanskrit-derived only, and ascribes the third category of Regional to “some people” (Sum-Total of Prakrit, p. 4).

55. See Drocco 2012: 125, with references to Pischel 1981 [1900]: §9: “The Indians include under the deśya or deśī class very heterogenous elements.”

56. Garland of Regional Nouns, introduction.

57. E.g., pāsaṃ “eye” from *pāśa-, from the same root as paśyati “see” (cited by Pischel 1981 [1900]: §9).

58. Hemacandra includes a large number of “Regional” words in his grammar as verbal substitutes (dhātvādeśas) simply in order to teach them with anubandhas—diacritical markers that convey information about how the form is used—that the format of his lexicon does not accommodate.

59. Sum-Total of Prakrit, commentary, p. 4: deśe deśe narendrāṇāṃ janānāṃ ca svake svake | bhaṅgyā pravartate yasmāt tasmād deśyaṃ nigadyate ||. I have not been able to trace this very in any extant work of Bhoja’s, although he is known to have written a Prakrit grammar that is no longer extant (according to Kumārasvāmin in his commentary to the Pratāparudrīya).

60. Music is one other discourse that was constitutively concerned with the regional (cf. Mataṅga’s Bṛhaddeśī), although here, too, regionality seems to be defined negatively, in contrast to an earlier transregional tradition, rather than through the particular practices of a particular place.

61. Garland of Regional Nouns 1.1 (Sanskrit commentary); Prakrit Lakṃsī 278 (kaïṇo aṃdha-jaṇa-kivā-kusala tti payāṇamaṃtimā vannā | nāmaṃmi jassa kamaso teṇesā viraiyā desī ||: “This deśī was composed by the poet whose name consists of the last letters of the words aṃdha, jaṇa, kivā, and kusula”); Pṛthvīdhara’s commentary on Little Clay Cart, p. 27.

62. Harivṛddha: marahaṭṭhadesasaṃkeaehi saddehi bhaṇṇae desī (see appendix C).

63. This is also clear in Ratnaśrījñāna’s introduction to the quotation (on Mirror of Literature 1.33, p. 23): deśī prākṛtaṃ mahārāṣṭraprasiddham.

64. See Garrez 1872 and Bloch 1970 [1914]; the word marāṭhī is derived from mahārāṣṭrī.

65. A rethinking of the concept of the “vernacular” on global-comparative lines has been necessitated by the work that the concept does in the writing of Sheldon Pollock, among others; see Cohen 2011. One useful starting point would be Somerset 2003. Here, however, I confine myself to the commonsense (“vernacular”) concept of the vernacular and its links to the social and the political.

66. In his Aihoḷe inscription of 634 CE, Pulakeśin II is said to have acquired sovereignty over “the three Mahārāṣṭrakas and their ninety thousand villages”(agamad adhipatitvaṃ yo mahārāṣṭrakāṇāṃ navanavatisahasragrāmabhājāṃ trayāṇām), and he was called “king of the Mahārāṣṭras” by Xuánzàng in 640–641 CE. The plural is important here, although not guaranteed by the Chinese. Later on, in 931 CE, Ratnaśrījñāna (p. 24) enumerated several regions as constituents of Mahārāṣṭra, including Kuntala, Aśmaka, and Vidarbha (although the text is corrupt here; see appendix C). For the formation of a vernacular polity under the later Yādava kings, see Schmiedchen 2014 and Novetzke 2016.

67. H. C. Bhayani (1973) was the first to notice this distinction, although he did not quite understand the significance of sāmaṇṇa.

68. See Bhuvanapāla on verse 112 (W104) of Seven Centuries: cīe iti sāmānyabhāṣāśrayeṇa śabdaprayogaḥ. lokaḥ kila cīyaśabdena citām āha. tadbhava-tatsama-deśī-sāmānyabhāṣāśrayena caturvidhaṃ prākṛtaṃ pūrvācāryāḥ smaranti. The pūrvācāryas must include Harivṛddha.

69. Mirror of Literature 1.35: śaurasenī ca gauḍī ca lāṭī cānyā ca tādṛśī | yāti prākṛtam ity eva vyavahāreṣu sannidhim ||. See also Ratnaśrījñāna’s commentary thereon, where these remarks of Harivṛddha are cited.

70. Prakrit Grammar of Trivikramadeva 1.1.1: siddhir lokāc ca; Appayya Dīkṣita III’s commentary thereon is prākṛtaśabdānāṃ madhye ete prayojyā ete na prayojyā iti vyavasthāyāḥ siddhiḥ niścayo na kevalaṃ vakṣyamāṇasūtrebhya eva, kiṃtu kāvyajñalokavyavahārād api syāt, tenātra śāstre sūtrānanuśiṣṭo ’pi kāvyābhiyuktavyavahārastho hrasva eṄ sādhur iti siddham (“The determination of whether linguistic forms should or should not be used in Prakrit does not only come from the following rules, but also from the actual practice of those who know literature, and therefore in this grammar whatever has not been explicitly taught by a rule—for example the use of a short e or o vowel—is correct if it occurs in the usage of literary authorities”).

71. Pollock 2004: 401.

72. Vararuci, Light on Prakrit: 8.23: śeṣaṃ saṃskṛtāt.

73. See Sum-Total of Prakrit 3.77; Ghanaśyāma’s criticisms are scattered throughout his commentaries on the plays of Kālidāsa and Bhavabhūti (the Saṃjīvanī on the Recognition of Śakuntalā is listed in the bibliography).

74. Rāma Pāṇivāda’s commentary on 1.42: kathaṃ tarhi ‘aha soūṇa taṃ porā ṇārāaṇam uvaṭṭhiaṃ’ iti prayoga iti cet bāhulakād iti brūmaḥ. nanu bāhulakaṃ bāhulakam iti tatra tatrodghoṣyate. na ca jñāyate kiṃ pramāṇam iti. satyam. ‘dāḍhādayo bahulam’ iti vakṣyate. tatra yogavibhāgaḥ kariṣyate. tathā ca bahulam iti sūtraṃ sarvavidhiśeṣatvena vyākhyāsyate. tena prayogānusāreṇa bahulaśabdopādānāt siddham iṣṭam. Also 4.34: evaṃ kṛte kiṃ kṛtaṃ bhavatīti pauravādiprayogāḥ sādhavo bhavantīty akhilam avadātam.

75. For “lack of rigor,” see Renou 1938: 165; the sentiment is common.

76. Nara 1979; Busch 2011; Cort 2015.

77. On these regimes, see Cohn 1996; Trautmann 2006.

78. See Dvivedi 2008 [1952], who is somewhat critical of these forward-tilting histories.

79. Hunter 2015: 740; Virāṭaparvan, pp. 7–8: umilva maṅgalā niṅ maṅjavākna byāsamata, maṅgala niṅ mikəta prakṛta nikeṅ virāṭaparva saṅ kathā (reading niṅ mikəta with Fokker instead of nimitta with Juynboll).

80. The text is the so-called Chandakaraṇa or Candrakiraṇa. See Lokesh Chandra 1997: 182: ujar parakṛta mvaṅ saṅaskṛta.

81. Cf. Pollock 2004: 406: “The striving for the specification of the vernacular particular from within the dominating Sanskrit epistemological universal; the quest for discipline in the putatively lawless dialectal; the search for a new authority upon which this discipline could be founded; the royal court as the social site par excellence for the production of systematic vernacular knowledge—this entire culture-power complex of vernacularity finds its most condensed expression in the production of Kannada grammar.” See also p. 412 of the same article.

82. Jewel-Mirror of Language 174. padavidhi kannaḍakaṃ sakkadakkam illādyarinde sanduvan aṟid’ i- | rpudu birudāvaḷiyoḷ pēḻvudu peṟavaṟoḷ āgad’ idu viruddha-samāsam ||: “Kannada words should not be joined with Samskrita words to form a compound. But some compounds, made by ancient poets are to be retained in usage; such compounds can be used in titles also. Nowhere else the use of such compounds is permitted” (trans. Kedilaya).

83. See Way of the Poet-King 1.51ff. and Analysis of Literature (of Nāgavarman), v. 55; the latter verse is quoted in the Jewel-Mirror at an earlier point (102).

84. Jewel-Mirror of Language 299. sakkadamaṃ maṟegoḷḷade cokkaḷikeyin accagannaḍaṃ bēḻpara ka- | yvokka nidhiy’ enip’ apabhraṃśakkam dēśīyapadakam uṇṭu samāsam ||: “For those who, without resorting to Samskrita, want to use pure Kannada, these tadbhava words, their compounds, and the tatsama compounds form a handy treasure. With these words and compounds, dēśīya (pure Kannada) words can be joined to form compounds” (trans. Kedilaya). The term samasaṃskṛtaṃ, which is defined in v. 80, had already been used in Way of the Poet-King (1.51 and 1.55).

85. Badiger 1978 thinks that the words in the apabhraṃśaprakaraṇa are actually Prakrit words that had been borrowed into Kannada (see also Nagarajaiah 1994 and Khadabadi 1981); this chapter clearly, however, has a generative rather than descriptive purpose.

86. “Likely”: see the discussion of Nannaya and Appakavi below in the text.

87. Ornament of the Āndhra Language, v. 7ab: saṃskṛta-prākṛtādi-lakṣaṇamu jeppi tenugunaku lakṣaṇamu jeppakuniki.

88. Ibid., v. 19: tatsamambun āga dadbhavambanan acca-tenugun āga mariyu dēśyam anaga | grāmyabhāṣan āga galavaidu teragulu vēṛe vēṛe vāni vistarintu ||; v. 27ab: tatsamambu dakka takkina nālagun acca-tenugul’ andur’ akhila-janulu |. See also Mitchell 2009: 103.

89. In her edition of Ornament of the Āndhra Language (pp. 24–25), Ainavolu suggests that accatenugu refers to common vocabulary items (tala “head,” nela “moon,” vēsavi “summer,” etc.), while dēśitenugu refers to words of the poetic vocabulary (eṟukuva “knowledge,” etc.).

90. Wishing-Stone 1.46–47; Mitchell 2009: 103. The phrase anyadeśaja-, which I translate as “of foreign origin” (literally, “originating in another place”), slightly complicates her argument that “the foreign” as a category is absent from premodern Telugu grammars.

91. Ocean of Meters, v. 70: int’ aṟupid’ ubhayabhāṣeyoḷaṃ toḍarade sarva-viṣaya-bhāṣādigaḷiṃ | mun tiḷupidapaṃ ninag’ ān antarisade kīḷ idaṃ payo-ruha-vadanī; also v. 296. In other texts, ubhayabhāṣā refers to Sanskrit and the regional vernacular; see Ornament of the Āndhra Language, v. 5, and the discussion of the “new duality” in chapter 7.

92. Pollock 1998, 2004.

93. Virahāṅka discusses the jātis in Prakrit and the vṛttas in Sanskrit (the latter in the fifth chapter).

94. The descent of Prakrit meters from Tamil originals was entirely self-evident to George Hart (1975), but a detailed study—which would take into account the other metrical systems of South India besides Tamil—remains to be done.

95. Mitchell 2009: 108; Pollock 2004: 402.

96. For Urdu as a mixed language, see Bangha 2005. For Malayalam I follow Freeman 1998, which mentions the Prakrit genealogy of maṇipravāḷam only in a footnote (no. 28).

97. In the praśasti to the text: prāyaḥ prākṛtabhāratyāṃ kvacit saṃskṛtamiśrayā | maṇipravālanyāyena prokto ’yaṃ granthavistaraḥ ||. I thank Sarah Pierce Taylor for the reference.

98. New Dramatic Art, 4: 385 (comm. on 32.382): trivargaprasiddhaṃ padamadhye saṃskṛtaṃ madhye deśabhāṣādiyuktaṃ tad eva kāryam, dakṣiṇāpathe maṇipravālam iti prasiddham, kāśmīre śāṭakulam iti. See also Ezhuthachan 1971.

CHAPTER 7. FORGETTING PRAKRIT

1. “The learned delight in the Sanskrit language; / nobody can relish the flavor of Prakrit. / Regional speech is sweet to everyone, / so that’s the kind of Avahaṭṭha I’ll speak.” Cited from McGregor 1984: 30; the translation is my own.

2. Jineśvara Sūri quotes this verse in the following form in his Treasury of Gāthā-Jewels (1194 CE), v. 21: pāiyakavvaṃ paḍhiuṃ guṃpheuṃ taha ya kujjayapasūṇaṃ | kuviyaṃ ca pasāheuṃ ajja vi bahave na yāṇaṃti ||. Jayaratha (later twelfth century) quotes it in the following form on p. 7 of his Analysis of Ruyyaka’s Totality of Ornaments: pāuabaṃdhaṃ paḍhiuṃ baṃdheuṃ taha a kujjakusumāiṃ | poḍhamahilaṃ ca ramiuṃ virala ccia ke vi jāṇaṃti ||.

3. E.g., Siddharṣi (see chapter 3).

4. The opposition dates to around 1540 (Alessandro Citolini’s Lettera in difesa della lingua volgare), and it is conspicuously absent from earlier discussions of Latin and the vernaculars in Renaissance Italy. See Faithfull 1953; Mioni 2004. On the “death of Sanskrit,” see Pollock 2001.

5. Alsdorf 2006 [1965]: 15–16.

6. Pollock 1998; 2006a: pt. 2.

7. Phukan 2001: 37.

8. Pollock 2006a: 39.–391; 2011: 24–25.

9. Pischel 1905–1906, reprinted with translation in Kulkarni 2003; Upadhye 1975–1976.

10. Bhoja is also credited with a Prakrit grammar that is now lost.

11. See Bhayani 1996 for a fragmentary poem on the theme of māna (another fragmentary poem is titled kodaṇḍa, “the bow”) and Katare 1952 for an inscribed verse of Seven Centuries, and see Disalkar 1960: 292 for inscriptional Prakrit more generally.

12. The Prakrit poet Dhanapāla, who was earlier patronized by Bhoja’s uncle Vākpati Muñja, was patronized by Bhoja later in life.

13. Pollock 2006a: 346; Tieken 2008.

14. The inscription, dated to the reign of the Cāḷukya king Vijayāditya Satyāśraya, is edited in Panchamukhi 1941: 2–3.

15. Yashaschandra 2003: 581.

16. Rice 1882: 301, 304; Ornament of the Āndhra Language, v. 5. For Ketana and Tikkana, see Narayana Rao 2003: 393.

17. Narayana Rao 1995: 28; 2003: 398.

18. Deeds of Manu, vv. 7–8.

19. Raghavan 1963: 824.

20. See Dvivedi 2008 [1952] and Siṃh 1971 [1952].

21. McGregor (1984: 30), followed by Tieken (2008: 358).

22. Nara 1979: 6, taking ko in the sense of kovi.

23. The final line of the verse, “that’s why one should compose in such an Avahaṭṭha,” refers to the desila vayanā mentioned previously, as Thibaut d’Hubert rightly suggests (personal communication).

24. Rice (1882: 301).

25. The text was edited by A. N. Upadhye; unbeknownst to him, it seems, Weber also consulted this text for his edition of Seven Centuries (it is his “second Telugu recension”).

26. Somasekhara Sarma 1948: 469; Narayana Rao and Shulman 2012: 22.

27. Vema, Essence of the Seven Centuries: hālaḥ prāk saptaśatīṃ gāthākoṭer vyadhatta saṃprati tu | so ’yaṃ vemabhūpālas tasyā api śatakam āharat sāram ||.

28. See Ghatage 1934–1935; Jain 1981: 38, and the comprehensive Jain 1961.

29. Yashaschandra 2003: 584–585; Bangha 2012.

30. Cort 2009.

31. Epitome of Queen Līlāvatī, pp. 26–28.

32. A. N. Upadhye’s introduction to vol. 2 of the Kuvayalamālā, p. 96; Christine Chojnacki is preparing a paper on these abridgments (see also Chojnacki 2012, 2016).

33. Ghatage 1934–1935: 42.

34. Cort 2015; on the Essence for Gommaṭa (Gommaṭasāra), see also Upadhye 1983; 1990: 263.

35. I owe this observation to Sheldon Pollock. Abhinavagupta cites Prakrit and Apabhramsha verses (and composes his own) in many of his works, but when commenting upon the Prakrit and Apabhramsha verses in Ānandavardhana’s Light on Suggestion, he typically provides a Sanskrit gloss.

36. Richard Pischel tentatively identifies this Vasantarāja with another, the Reḍḍi king Kumāragiri (r. 1386–1402), who was deposed by the very same Pedakomaṭi Vema that we encountered earlier as the author of Essence of the Seven Centuries (see Pischel 1874: 17–18). Thanks to an old manuscript of Vasantarāja’s commentary held at Cambridge, and brought to my attention by Vincenzo Vergiani (see MS Or. 84 at https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-OR-00084/1), we know that the author is the same as the author of the Vasantarājaśakuna, who was patronized by Candradeva (probably the Gāhaḍavāla king who ruled from 1089 to 1103, and at any rate earlier than Ballālasena in the twelfth century, who quotes the Vasantarājaśakuna).

37. Lakṣmīdhara wrote a commentary on Jayadeva’s twelfth-century classic Gītagovinda that is ascribed in one manuscript to the Vijayanagara king Tirumala (r. 1565–1572 CE).

38. For a recent overview of Śeṣa Kṛṣṇa’s career, see Benke 2010.

39. See Moonlight of Prakrit 9.36 (referring to the Moonlight of Words [Padacandrikā]).

40. Raghavan 1941.

41. See Upadhye’s introductions to the Candralekhā, as well as Naikar 1998 and the forthcoming PhD dissertation of Melinda Fodor (Paris).

42. For the story of this rivalry, especially as reported in the Pṛthvirāj Rāso, see Talbot 2016.

43. Candralekhā of Rudradāsa, Upadhye’s Introduction, p. 58: “the result has fallen far short of what a drama really should be”.

44. For Ghanaśyāma in general, see Chaudhuri 1943; Mainkar 1970; Shukla 1985; Yutaka 2007.

45. Upadhye 1955.

46. Ghanaśyāma, Ānandasundarī 1.8: pākhaṃḍo ṇa mahaṃ tidikkhaï viḍo sīlāi vijjaṃ jaḍo jaṃ jaṃ jassa sudullahaṃ khidisu so taṃ taṃ muhā ṇiṃdaï | (huṃ, avahido suṇāhi) te savve uṇa ekka-desa-kaïṇo je ekka-bhāsā-caṇā so saṃpuṇṇa-kaī vihāi bhuvaṇe jo savva-bhāsā-kaī ||.

47. See pp. xxxiv–xxxix of Upadhye’s introduction to Kaṃsa’s Demise.

48. These commentaries on Rāvaṇa’s Demise by Pravarasena are discussed by Krishnakanta Handique in his introduction to his 1976 translation, and most recently by Acharya 2006, noting a manuscript of Harṣapāla’s commentary.

49. Rāmadāsa, Light on Rāma’s Bridge, p. 2: dhīrāṇāṃ kāvyacarcācaturimavidhaye vikramādityavācā yaṃ cakre kālidāsaḥ kavikusumavidhuḥ setunāmaprabandham | tadvyākhyā sauṣṭhavārthaṃ pariṣadi kurute rāmadāsaḥ sa eva granthaṃ jallālīndrakṣitipativacasā rāmasetupradīpam ||.

50. Harṣapāla’s commentary, second verse: tena prākṛtakovidaiḥ saha samālocya prasannākṣaram saṃkṣepād akarod idaṃ vivaraṇaṃ śrīharṣapālo nṛpaḥ ||.

51. Pollock 2014: 119.

52. See Prakrit Piṅgala 1.71, 1.190, 1.204. Similar “accidental anthologies” are discussed in chapter 4.

53. Siṃh 1997 [1956]; Vyas 1962; Nara 1979; Bubeník 1998.

54. Prakrit Piṅgala 1.1: paḍhamabbhāsataraṃḍo; Lakṣmīnātha offers three alternatives for -bbhāsa-, but favors bhāṣā. For the boat image, see Mirror of Literature 1.12.

55. E.g., Prakrit Piṅgala 1.177 (jaṃpaï piṃgala vīra), 1.191 (piṃgaleṇa paāsio), 1.194 (bhaṇaï phaṇiṃdo vimalamaī), etc.

56. See Busch 2011a on “Hindi literary beginnings.” For Piṅgala as the first poet of bhāṣā (or narabhāṣā), see Lakṣmīnātha’s commentary on Prakrit Piṅgala 1.1 and Keśavadāsa, Garland of Meters (Chandamālā) 2.4; I thank Allison Busch for the reference. Both the Adornment of Language (Vāṇībhūṣaṇa) and the Pearl of Meters (Vṛttamauktika) are Sanskrit reworkings of the Prakrit Piṅgala (the latter based heavily on the former); Keśavadāsa too works the introductory verses of the Prakrit Piṅgala, perhaps from a Sanskrit source, into the beginning of the second section of his Garland of Meters.

57. Lakṣmīnātha’s commentary to Prakrit Piṅgala 1.1. The earliest citation I have found for the conceit of Piṅgala as a Nāga is Halāyudha’s commentary (middle of the tenth century) on the Chandaḥ Sūtra. Earlier authors refer to him, among them Śabara, Virahāṅka, and the author (Mitradhara?) of the Chandoviciti discovered in Turfan (Schlingloff 1958), but not as a nāga (unless he is the authority to whom Virahāṅka refers as bhuaāhiva).

58. Siṃh 1997 [1956]: §30, who cites Bhikhārīdāsa’s Examination of Literature, v. 15: braja māgadhī milai amara nāga yavana bhākhāni | sahaja pārasī hūṃ milai ṣaṭa vidhi kahata bakhāni ||. If this argument is correct, we should not expect to find Prakrit designated as the language of the snakes in the early Mārū-Gūrjar literature (of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), which I have not consulted. Some Prakrit texts do seem to have a lot to do with snakes (e.g., Hara’s Belt, a compendium of medical and magical knowledge of the tenth century, whose title refers to the serpent Vāsuki), but do not represent Prakrit as the language of the snakes, as far as I am aware.