A cartoon by RK Lakshman made nearly 50 years ago on the anti-Hindi agitation by the DMK under the direction of Anna durai and participated by Karunanidhi has become a bone of contention after it became known that it was included in the NCERT text book of Political science for class XII. The cartoon was not exactly an imagined one, but was an illustration of the true incidents that happened when the agitators belonging to the DMK party went around with tar-tins and brushes to paint black the Hindi names in the sign boards in railway stations and post offices. Emotionally whipped up by the DMK leaders such as Anna durai and Karunanidhi, they did so, as a show of their love for Tamil and preservation of Tamil but ended up blackening all letters – including Tamil and English as they could not differentiate between Hindi and English and not even recognize Tamil owing to their illiteracy! This was depicted in that cartoon by RK Lakshman.
This agitation shows the kind of followers that DMK had. The DMK believed in whipping up raw emotions and a vent to express destructive power. It had blind followers who had no brains of their own. If they have had, they would have compared Hindi with English and assessed whether any damage happened to Tamil by the use of English which was in use for more than two centuries of British rule in the Madras Presidency. They would have wondered how Hindi could mean rule of the North over the South while the use of English for over two centuries did not pave way for the permanent rule of the British in India. Ironically it is the leaders of the DMK who wanted the British to continue to rule India even after India got Independence. If they could accept the British, why could they not accept the North Indians?
The only strategy that Karunanidhi and DMK knew then and now also – is to promote a hate-culture. Create a fear in the minds of the people about someone or something and make them hate; that would get them votes to make them enjoy power. For the DMK, Hindi, Sanskrit, Brahmins and North Indians all meant one thing – that is, Aryans! In this way, Jayalalithaa is an Aryan (Arya-Brahmin – Arya paappaatthi – ஆரியப் பாப்பாத்தி) who deserves to be hated and done away with, but an Italian Sonia is not. In their zeal for holding on to a hate culture based on Dravidian identity, they opposed Hindi as a link language.
Politics of Karunanidhi and DMK is such that the day is not far off when political science would have a chapter on his way of politics and a discussion on its demerits because, every ill of the Indian society of today can be traced to the DMK's way of thinking and action in those days. The language chauvinism, doing politics of division on the basis of language, caste and religion, encouraging hooliganism as a means of agitation and corruption are some of the trademarks of DMK which have slowly spread throughout India. However I want to concentrate on a different issue in this article.
While the anti-Hindi agitation was seen as an important milestone in the history of Dravidian politics with the aim of achieving 'Dravida naadu' through separation from the Indian Union, Time had shown what happened to those trends in due course. For a student of Political history, this is an important and interesting event because when seen fifty years after that agitation, there is assurance that only nationalism – not separatism can win or had won. This is a lesson for political thinkers of the current times also because we have separatist elements still moving around us threatening the unity of the Nation.
The judgement of History seen after 50 years of the anti-Hindi agitation had been recorded in the NCERT text book on Political science for class XII as - "Initially seen as a threat to Indian nationalism, regional politics in Tamilnadu is a good example of the compatibility of regionalism and nationalism." The clamour for Dravida naadu was given up. Though learning Hindi was successfully thwarted by the DMK, people have started feeling the pinch of ignoring Hindi. The denial of learning Hindi had caused seclusion for Tamils - the best example being Alagiri, the son of Karunanidhi himself whose travails as minister in Delhi will also be remembered even after 50 years in the history of Tamils in Central ministry!
By demanding removal of this cartoon, the Dravidian cadres are once again doing what the agitator in RK Lakshman's cartoon is seen doing – of blindly following what the leaders were telling and not using their own brains to see the good from bad and right from wrong! Karunanidhi and the Dravidian politicians of Tamilnadu want blind followers whom they want to use to build an empire for themselves. They create an artificial enemy for the people and make the people believe that such an enemy exits and pose themselves as the protector from that enemy. In the process, the gullible followers are not seen to show any sign of thinking and maturity and they start eulogising the corrupt and the wrong ones as great ones. As an example, look at the way A Raja was received by the DMK supporters after he was released on bail.
He was given a welcome of a hero by a crowd that was mostly paid for doing that or having some stakes for being there. While receiving him, the crowd shouted slogans such as 'Tiharai vendra theerane' (brave-heart who conquered Tihar) and 'Tamizhinathin maravane' (soldier of the Tamil race) – as though he had won a war. There was no shame for being tried for a corrupt activity and no regret for being there to praise these persons. Such is the level of value-system, ethics and morality that politicians having allegiance to Dravidian ethos have developed in themselves and in the people around them.
A similar trend was witnessed when Kanimozhi came out on bail. It was as though she was in Tihar for a nationalistic cause and had finally won her case and come out. This sentiment was expressed by the leaders of DMK and was expressed in posters put up by the followers of Karunanidhi.
This poster put up when she was released on bail calls her as the 'sacrifice (tyag) for the Dravidian movement'. Why didn't any follower of Karunanidhi think what sacrifice she did for the movement or the party in her role in 2G scam? Why couldn't the people who conceived this idea of the poster think in those lines? Are they not the same as the mob shown in RK Lakshman's cartoon?
By calling for the removal of the cartoon, the Dravidian leaders think that they are erasing 'wrong' interpretation of their agitation. The reality is that whatever they may think of the agitation and about themselves, History would not record them as they want it to be. This is what is made out in the lesson on anti-Hindi movement recorded in the text book. Karunanidhi might consider that agitation as a feather in the cap of his party. He might think that he has safe guarded Tamil by that agitation. But history will see in the way that the cartoon has depicted – as a mobocracy let loose by the DMK. Karunanidhi may succeed in getting that cartoon removed from the text book now, but he cannot stop future writers of history from recording the futility of an agitation of that kind because none of the aims of that agitation was achieved. Separatism was not achieved and successive generations could not be stopped from learning Hindi or any other language. Even in his own times, Karunanidhi could not stop or did nothing to stop a poster greeting his son Stalin in Hindi on his birthday. It was put up in Chennai recently.
What has he got to say for this poster?
Karunanidhi accused in his party magazine yesterday that "few officials here and there and Hindi fanatics have been trying to impose that language" in Tamilnadu.
Were the signatories of the above poster among those officials and Hindi fanatics? What action is he going to take against them who are his own party cadres for putting up this poster 3 months ago?
Why anti-Hindi stance?
Karunanidhi's line of reasoning for his anti-Hindi tirade is protection of Tamil. Many of the so-called Tamil scholars support him on that plank. They said that if Hindi was allowed, Tamil would be lost, replaced and destroyed. But the question is did he really contribute to Tamil by these agitations? Even today – 50 years after the anti-Hindi agitations and the so-called measures to promote Tamil, one can come across sub-standard Tamil in the posters put up by the DMK cadres in praise of Karunanidhi. One poster screams "Vaazum varalaaRe" (he is a 'living history') with a wrong spelling of 'r'. (வரலாரே instead of வரலாறே).
This poster showing Karunanidhi has spelling mistakes. They are shown in arrow marks.
One can come across many posters like this with spelling mistakes. It is easy to blame the composer of the poster for the mistakes. But the fact is that the standard of Tamil has come down in the State. Not many of his own cadres can write even simple sentences without mistakes. Most of them cannot even pronounce the special letter of "Zha" (ழ) of Tamil properly. For a person who is boasting himself as a protector of Tamil and having ruled Tamilnadu for 5 terms and agitated against Hindi for the protection of Tamil could not ensure that even the public displays of his pictures do not come without spelling mistakes.
Worse than this, are the conceptual mistakes in the compositions of Karunanidhi. To cite an example let me show this poster having a verse composed by Karunanidhi himself.
This was put up at the time of his recent birthday. The verse penned by Karunanidhi says "If you light a candle you can light thousand lamps with that. So too can be done by a woman who is educated.". By showing his daughter on the other side (ironically in a northerner's dress and not in traditional dress of a Tamil), the one who put up this poster has conveyed a message of who the political successor of Karunanidhi could be. But the issue I want to focus is on the use of inappropriate words in the verse by Karunanidhi. He has actually written "If you can burn a candle, you can burn thousand lamps with that". There are norms for proper use of words in a context. You don't burn a candle or a lamp. You light it. Burn comes with some destructive note and not used in the context of lighting a lamp or spreading the light of knowledge or education. This verse could have been written as "ஒரு மெழுகுவர்த்தியை ஏற்றினால் அதைக் கொண்டு ஆயிரம் விளக்குகளை ஏற்ற முடியும்."
The Tamil written or spoken by Karunanidhi and his fellow Dravidian writers have never been of good standard or of literary value. Fifty years after the peak of Dravidian movement, many people have started acknowledging this fact. Apart from the rhyming words of the T Rajender kind, there is no substance in his writings. His works cannot stand the test of time. One best example of his 'poetry' is the title song he penned for the Tamil conference. Read:-
Chemmozhi theme song (World Tamil conference series - 4)
A stronger reason why his works cannot stand the test of time can be derived from Thirukkural, a popular composition for which he has written commentary (with inappropriate interpretation for most verses). In the very opening chapter in Thirukkural, the first verse hails God as the progenitor and the next verse says that there is no use of education (or knowledge) if the person does not worship God! A self -declared atheist that Karunanidhi is, his works or his knowledge is of no use according to Thiruvalluvar. (கற்றதனாலாய பயனென்கொல் வாலறிவன் நற்றாள் தொழாஅர் எனின்)
On a deeper analysis, it is seen that Tamil's rich past and its role in ancient India had been forgotten in the one century of Dravidian movement. When the Dravidian movement was picking up, a lot of developments were happening on the literary side. Many palm leaf records of old Sangam poems were brought out in print and were accessible to many people. But with the Dravidian movement promoting a non -existent Tamil land in the Indus and an Aryan –Dravidian war, almost the entire focus shifted to interpreting the Tamil texts on those lines. Today you won't come across a credible Tamil work without a taint of Dravidian thought. The tenor of anti-Hindi agitation shows a facet of the loss of the role of Tamil as a language in ancient India.
Let me explain it in the coming passages. One of the important agitations was against the changing of the name of a town - from Kallakkudi to Dalmiapuram. This place had a cement factory set up by the industrialist Ramakrishna Dalmia in whose name the town was renamed. The Tamil protectors said that Dalmia is a Hindi name and hence started the agitation.
Karunanidhi can be seen leading the agitators in the Kallakkudi railway station in the above picture. One fails to understand what is there as imposition of Hindi in the renaming of that town. It is common practice to name a place after the founder of an important economic activity. There had been number of cases of names of places and roads in English after the British rulers. The DMK politicians had never questioned the British at those times or regretted them as symbols of imposition. The irony is that Karunanidhi named his son "Stalin" who was born during the height of anti-Hindi agitation. This name "Stalin" cannot be written in pure Tamil. For him a Russian name was acceptable whereas a Hindi name was not.
Stranger than this was the renaming he did for the Government Hospital in Chennai. For one who thought that Dalmia was a Hindi name, it did not occur if Rajiv Gandhi was a Hindi name or not. Karunanidhi who prides himself in having agitated against Hindi Dalmia is no different from his followers who have never exhibited thinking capacity, for, he without any hesitation named the General Hospital in Chennai as Rajiv Gandhi Government Hospital in his last tenure! No one person from Tamilnadu – not even the so-called intellectuals and writers drew the attention to the contradiction in the anti-Hindi stance of Karunanidhi.
The irony is that both Dalmia and Rajiv Gandhi paid political dividends to Karunanidhi like two sides of the same Hindi coin!
Let me now come to the main theme of this article. I want to highlight that Dalmia was a derived from Tamil! The true history of Tamil is that it was spoken by almost all the people of Bharat in olden days – say about 7000 years ago. It was spoken by Rama, Sita and Vanaras. Hanuman conversed in Tamil with Sita in Ashoka vana. There is even a Tamil adage finding mention in the talks of Sita to the Rakshasis in the Valmiki Ramayana. Tamil was then known as Madhura Bhasha. Sita and hanuman conversed in Madhura Bhasha or Madhuram vaakyam. The first capital of the Pandyas who developed Tamil was known as Madhurai due to this name. The people who migrated to Indian mainland at that time established northern Madhurai now known as Mathura on the banks of Yamuna.
Usually proper nouns will not changed but pronounced the same in any language. For example Ganga will be called as Ganga only in any language. Almost all the names of sacred places of Bharat except two are known by the same name in Tamil. The exceptions are Mathura and Kailash. Mathura is known as "Thozhunai" (having the special 'zha' of Tamil) and Kailash as "Kuyilaaluvam". Literal translation of Thozhunai is "Gotra"! People of an olden era speaking Madhura Bhasha had settled on the banks of Yamuna and coined names in Madhura Bhsasha for the river and the place situated on its bank. To know more about the movement of people to this region, read
Who is a Dravida, Mr Karunanidhi?
Tamil was the oldest spoken language of all the people who are now separated in the name of region and language. The name Dalmia was derived from Dalna in Hindi. Some of the meanings of that word are to inflict, to throw, to shoot, to fling etc. Though the words do not start with "da" in Tamil, a prefix "a" is added. As such "Adal" is a Tamil word which comes with the same meaning as dalna. The one engaged in "Adal" is a warrior who can take on his enemies or becomes a protector of a group. The Adal became Dal, dalna, dalma, dalmia. The Dalmias must have been kshatriyas in the past – and engaged in Adal, but turned into vaisyas in course of time.
Many names have connection with Tamil from where the root meanings can be derived. For instance, the popular name of Ambedkar has a similar word as "Ambalakkaran" in Tamil which signifies the position of a dignified chief.
Thackeray has a root in "Thakkaar" in Tamil – the title for 'suitable head' of a group. Thakur and Tagore are further variations of this word.
Kappadam in Tamil means cloth or dress which is also there as kapada in Hindi. Kapadia is a derivative of this word.
Bacchan was said to be derived from Bacha menaing young. In Tamil 'pacchai' is used to denote young. By pa –ba inter change, pacchai became baccha and Bacchan.
The term Bacchan also sounds similar to Acchan which is recognized as a Malayalam word for father. But it was originally a term from "Kodum Tamil" (non- grammatical Tamil) spoken Tamil prevalent in regions around ancient Tamil lands. It means both father and God.
Ganguly may have been derived from the word Ganga. However there are Tamil words such as GangaaLi denoting Parvathy devi. Gangul in Tamil means darkness.
The silk weavers of Gujarat are known as Patnuli. Pattu-nool is the word in Tamil for silk thread.
Patnaik means Patta naayakan in Tamil – meaning the crowned chief.
Patel and Patwari have always referred to Big men of the village according to 1881 census. Though patta exists in Sanskrit (eg - pattabhishekam), the word seems to have come from "patti" of Tamil. Patti means a small village or a place where a group of people live. The name of the chief of Patti came connected to that word and from that pat-nayak, patta-nayakan, patwari, patel etc had sprung up.
Koli is a weaver in Gujarat. The same word exists in Tamil to mean weaving. Perhaps Kohli was a derivation from this.
Nehwal is derived from Newal or a village called Newali. Nevi is a Tamil word meaning lotus. A place connected with Nevi can be expected to have a waterway. Newali near Latur in Maharashtra is on the banks of a river and has a dam also.
Kaivartta or Kaibartta were fisher tribes in early days. This name is derived from Kewat according to early records in census. Kevedan is a Tamil word for fishermen. The name has changed from Kevedan to Kewat to Kaivrat to Kaivartta and Kaibartta.
Kunbi is a name widespread throughout north India. They were basically identified as tillers / farmers. Kumbi is a Tamil word for the wet mud of the fields. The one who enters wet mud and works on it is a farmer. Kumbi also means stomach in Tamil. Food production is therefore connected to Kumbi and the farmer (kunbi).
The name Tendulkar also sounds close to Tamil. 'Thandhurai' is used in literature. It is the prologue written in the beginning. The one who deciphers the texts and writes Thandhurai or gives discourses is a Thandhulakan. From that Tendulkar could have sprung up. Like this many derivations can be traced to Tamil.
I am not saying this with any language chauvinism but to bring to the notice of the readers that almost all regional languages of India had an influence of both Tamil and Sanskrit in the past. Even Tamil and Sanskrit had a common growth as seen by the sharing up of nearly 30% of words among them. The Tamil that was promoted in core Tamil land of Pandyas (situated somewhere in the Indian ocean and submerged subsequently ) was grammatical Tamil that was based on the grammar of Agasthya (called Agasthyam). According to a 10th century book by one Nakkeeranaar, the refinement of Tamil with grammar was done about about 12,000 years ago before present. The people coming under the direct reign of Pandyan kings spoke grammatical Tamil. But the people who had already started moving out and migrating due to various reasons held on to the old form of Tamil which was not refined by grammar. They spread to the rest of India once the climate became conducive in the wake of the end of Ice Age. They were still speaking the old form of Tamil in addition to Sanskrit that was the language of Vedic studies. That spoken language came to be known as "Apa Brahmsa" (near Brahman). In course of time those who left the Vedic life started forgetting Sanskrit completely and were speaking Apa Brahmsa only. Apa Brahmsa became the mother language of many north Indian languages including Hindi. The important part of Apa Brahmsa is that most of the words are Tamil in corrupt form!
It is recorded in the Census Report of 1901 how most languages of India had Apa Brahmsa basis. Unfortunately people stuck to Caldwell's classification of Dravidian and Indo Aryan group of languages and ignored the Pan Indian Apa Brahmsa basis for all the languages of India including Hindi and Marathi. The main culprit for this ignorance was that the people succumbed to the Dravidian propaganda of the DMK who promoted Tamil chauvinism without realising that Tamil had a much wider prevalence in the past. Consequent to this, polarisation of people took place throughout India around language identity. At least now people must wake up and take away language from the clutches of politicians.
Apa Brahmsa was considered as secondary Prakrit as it had no Sanskrit basis, whereas Prakrit had Sanskrit influence in it. An important proof for the prevalence of Tamil in non grammatical or corrupt form throughout India was that Tholkaappiyam recognises the use of "Kodum Thamizh" (stunted Tamil) spoken by the people who migrated from Dwaraka and settled around the core Tamil lands of Pandyan kingdom. The Vels (connected to Beldars of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan who were degraded into low castes during Muslim invasions and further degraded by the British in their classification of castes) spread throughout the western and northern parts of Tamil lands and made a dignified life for themselves. Verses praising them are found in the sangam of Pura nanuru. They did not speak chaste Tamil, but Kodum Tamil.
This is proof of the existence of Tamil outside the present-day Tamilnadu in those days. The Vels settled in South India around 1500 BC, as known from Kapilar's verse on Irungovel who was hailed as the 49th descendant in the lineage that shifted to Tamil lands from Dwarka (Byt Dwaraka which got submerged around 1500 BC. This was different from Krishna's Dwaraka that was submerged around 3000 BC. The Indus civilisation flourished in Gujarat between these two submergences. The migration of the people from here to Tamil lands around 1500 BC explains the prevalence of Indus signs in Tamilnadu. )
The regional dialects of Tamil are indeed the development from Kodum tamizh and not grammatical Tamil. All those Dravidian leaders including Karunanidhi who are swearing to protect Tamil in the name of opposing Hindi are not original speakers of Tamil. Even the identity that they have for themselves as "Dravidian" is not a Tamil word – which is not even a derivation from Kodum tamil. By whipping up language passions, they had only succeeded in isolating Tamil and discouraged cross- language studies that could have helped in exposing the ancient prevalence of Tamil.
Until the British destroyed our traditional system of schooling, a student anywhere in the Madras Presidency had the knowledge of many languages besides his mother tongue. This helped him to understand the close connection between languages. There was little scope for language chauvinism in that atmosphere. But all those have been destroyed by DMK politicians particularly Karunanidhi and subsequently picked up by politicians of other regions.
Karunanidhi is the most satisfied person with his ' politics' of agitations and hate culture. He has achieved what he wanted even at his old age and even while out of power. The picture below tells all that.
(Picture taken on his 89th birthday on 3rd June, 2012)
(concluded)
From the report of the 1901 census.
http://www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au/dcd/page.php?title=&action=previous&record=1443
Apabhramsa.
500. The next stage of the Secondary Prakrits is that known as "literary Apabhiamśsa." The word Apabliramśa means "corrupt" or "decayed." Applied to a language, it means, from the point of view of a philologist, "developed." When the Prakrits, by being reduced to writing, became fixed exactly as Sanskrit had become fixed in the Brahmanical schools, and remained unchanged as a literary form of speech for many generations, the true vernaculars on which they were founded were called by this name, as they were from the point of view of a scholar of Prakrit "corrupt." These were the Apabhramśas and in a still further stage of their development (by which time the Prakrits had become dead languages) they also were used in literary works, some of which have survived to the present day. As these works were evidently intended to represent the current vernacular as nearly as possible, the language used has not been nearly so severely edited as was the case with the earlier Apabhramśas which were the foundation of the Prakrits. We have, therefore, in this Apabhramśa literature valuable evidence as to the actual spoken languages of India at the time of its committal to writing. As to what that time was we are unable to say with any degree of exactitude. All that we can be certain about is that we have Apabhramśa poetry written in the sixth and also in the first half of the eleventh century, although at the latter period it may have been a dead language. On the other hand, the earliest specimens which we possess of what may be called the modern vernaculars (i.e., the Tertiary Prakrits) date from the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. It is quite possible that there were older ones. At any rate, the form of language which I call Tertiary must have been well established before it could have been used for literary works, so that, as I have said above, we may roughly consider the year 1000 A.D. to be the approximate date from which the modern Indo-Aryan languages took their present shape. We may thus assume that the vernaculars of India were represented by the literary Apabhramśa dialects in, approximately, the later centuries of the first millennium after Christ.
Apabhramsa dialects.
501. It is, therefore, to Apabhramśa rather than to the literary Prakrits, and much more rather than to Sanskrit, that we must look for explanations of the development of the modern vernaculars. Sanskrit and, specially, the literary Prakrits will often, it is true, throw valuable side-lights on our enquiries, but the root of our investigations must be Apabhramśa. Only one dialect,* the Nāgara (probably spoken in Western India), has been preserved to us by literature, but with the aid of the Prakrit grammarians it is not difficult to reconstruct the chief features of the others. It will be sufficient to give a list of these dialects together with the modern languages which have descended from tleni. In the country round the lower Indus the Apabhramśa dialect called Vrāchada was spoken. It was the parent of the modern Sindhī and Lahndā, the latter being spoken in the ancient country of the Kaikēyas, who appear to have had a dialect of their own, or possibly, to have included in their number members of a tribe speaking a non-Sanskritic language. "We do not know the name of the dialect from which Kōhistānī and Kāshmīrī are descended, but it must have been closely related to Vrāchada, if not actually that form of speech. South of the Nerbudda Valley, running nearly across India from the Arabian Sea to Orissa, there must have been spoken a number of dialects all related to the Apabhramśa Vaidarbhl or Dākshinātya, whose head-quarters were Vidarbha, the modern Berar, known in Sanskrit literature as the Great Kingdom—Mahārāshtra. It and allied Apabhramśas were the parent of the modern Mārathī.† To the east of Dākshinatya, and reaching to the Bay of Bengal, was the Apabhramśa Ōdrī or Utkalī, from which was descended the modern Oriyā. North of Ōdrī, and covering the greater part of the present provinces of Chota Nāgpur and Bihar, together with the eastern half of the United Provinces up to about the meridian of Benares, was the great Apabhramśa dialect of Magahī, the parent of the modern Bihārī, one of whose dialects, Magahī, still bears the ancient name. It was the principal dialect which corresponded to the old Eastern Prakrit, and not only Ōdrī, already mentioned, but also Gaudī and Dhakki are further developments of it. These four are all representatives of the old Eastern form of speech. East of Māgadhī lay Gauda or Prāchya Apabhramśa, the head-quarters of which were at Gaur, in the present district of Malda. It spread to the south and south-east, and here became the parent of the modern Bengali. Further east, round the present Dacca, it developed into another Apabhramśa, Dhakkī, the original of the modern Eastern Bengali spoken in Mymensingh, Dacca, Sylhet, and Cachar. Besides spreading to the southwards, Gauda Apabhramśa also spread to the east keeping north of the Ganges, and is there represented at the present day by Northern Bengali and, in the valley of Assam, by Assamese. Northern Bengal and Assam did not get their language from Bengal proper, but directly from the west. Māgadhā Apabhramśa, in fact, may be considered as spreading out eastwards and southwards in three directions. To the north it developed into Northern Bengali and Assamese, to the south into Oriyā, and between the two into Bengali. Each of these three descendants is equally directly connected with their common immediate parent, and hence we find Northern Bengali agreeing in many respects rather with the Oriyā spoken far away to the south than with the Bengali of Bengal proper, of which it is usually classed as a subordinate dialect.
502. We have now concluded our survey of the Apabhramśa dialects, which belong to what I have called the Outer Indo-Aryan languages. Between the eastern and the western Prakrits there was, as already stated, an intermediate one called Ardha-Māgadhī. Its modern representative is Eastern Hindī, spoken in Oudh, Baghelkhand, and the Chhattisgarh country. The eastern limit of Eastern Hindī may roughly be taken as the meridian of Benares, and, to the west, it passes a short way beyond Allahabad, its furthest point being in the district of Banda.
* A striking proof of the existence of dialects in Vedic times is conveyed by the fact that Apabhramśa, and indeed all the Secondary Prakrits, contain forms which cannot he explained by any reference to Classical Sanskrit. Such is the locative termination hi, derived immediately from the Pāli and Old Sanskrit (but not the Literary Sanskrit) dhi. This corresponds to the Greek termination θι, and must (as dhi) have been used in the Vedic period, though excluded from the standard dialect from which Classical Sanskrit is derived.
† Marāthi was derived from the Apabhramśa spoken in Mahārāshtra. What is known as Hahārāshtri Prakrit was the literary form of that Apabhramśa; a very artificial production, which was principally used for poetry intended to be set to music, and which has freely borrowed from Prakrits spoken in other parts of India.
503. As regards the Inner languages, the principal Apabhramśa that which has been preserved to us by literature. It was known as Nāgara Apabhramśa, and, as its name suggests, was probably the language of "Western India, where the Nāgara Brāhmans still form an important part of the community. In various dialects (and it certainly had local variations) it must, if we are to accept the evidence of the modern vernaculars, have extended over the whole of Western India north of the Deccan, excepting the extreme north-west. Amongst them was the Śaurasēna Apabhramśa of the middle Dōāb,* which was the parent of the modern "Western Hindī and Panjābī. Another dialect of this Apabhramśa, Āvantī, whose head-quarters were in the country round the modern Ujjain, was the parent of Rājasthānī and yet another, Gaurjarī, of the modern Gujarātī. Both these last were certainly very closely related to the standard Nāgara Apa- bhramśa dialect.
504. There remain the modern languages of the Northern Group. These are spoken in the Himalaya from the Eastern Punjab to Nepal. We know of no Prakrits or Apabhramśas peculiar to this tract. The modern languages are closely connected with Rājasthānī, and we know from history that at least some of the tribes which speak them claim to have originally migrated from Rajputana. It is therefore safe to assume, until further information becomes available, that all these forms of speech should linguistically be classed as of common origin with Rājasthānī, and that therefore they are derived from the Apabhramśa of Āvantī.
