পৃষ্ঠা:অসমীয়া ব্যাকৰণ আৰু ভাষাতত্ত্ব.djvu/২৯

INTRODUCTION 1 Brahmanic religion. Of course, the Brahmans and Brahmanic religion, he says, existed during this peirod. But the inscriptions of this period showed greater respect for the people than for the Brahmanic learning And almost the whole population from king to the humblest subjects professed Buddhism, Professor Rhys Davids also concurs in this view and holds that during the four centuries prior to 200 B.C. this state of things prevailed in a greater degree. In support of this view he quotes the following extract from Hopkins Religions of India, (p. 548):-- | “Brahmanism has always been an island in a sea. Even in the Brahmanic age there is evidence to show that it was the isolated belief of a comparatively small group of minds. It did not even control all the Aryan population."। | From such observations it will be clear that since before the rise of Buddhism the common language of Kosala, referred to above, was, to a greater extent than the Hindi language at the present time, the lingua franca of India. It was adopted by the Wanderers for their discussions and from it the secondary Prakrt, known as Pali, was derived. Gautama, the Buddha, who was himself a kosalan, adopted this language for the propagation of his faith. The Brahmanic language, as preserved in the Vedas, was not the language then in common use although the common language we are speaking of was derived from it and from its inrnumerable dialects. Pali retained many vedic and pre-Vedic forms which were wholly absent from the later classical Sanskrit. in the course of time this common language, Pali, also canne under the grammatical sway of Kachghayano whose probable date was about 350 B.c'. Among the Buddhists it became a fashionable literary language. The Buddhist scriptures compiled and arranged by his disciples were written in ali. The canonical texts divided into three pitakas (or baskets) were in Pali. From this arose the name of “Pali” (i.e. series). When the Buddhist empire broke up with the fall of the Mauryan dynasty and the Gupta Kings came into power the influence of the Brahmans and Brahmanical religion, under their patronage, gradually spread; and this was followed by the extension and diffusion of classical Sanskrit as the literary language of Buddhist India, | Professor Rhys Davids has arranged the gradual change of form f the Indo-Aryan language in the following chronological order :-- 1. The dialects spoken by the Aryan invaders of India and by the Davidian and Kolarian inhabitants they found there. 2. Ancient High Indian, the Vedic. | 3. The dialects spoken by the Aryans, now often united by marriage and political union with the Dayidians, in their settlements 1 Weber's History of Indian Literature, p. 223