Prakrit

Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 5 "The Rise of Empires"; Class 12, Ch 2 "Kings, Farmers and Towns"

Meaning

Prakrit is the name for the everyday spoken languages of ordinary people in early India, as opposed to Sanskrit, the language of priests and learned elites. It matters because the earliest Indian inscriptions, including most of Asoka's, are in Prakrit. Scholars could read Asokan Brahmi only after they realised the language was Prakrit and not Sanskrit.

Explanation

What Prakrit is

• "Prakrit" is not one single language. It is a group of spoken languages used by ordinary people in different regions.
• It stood apart from Sanskrit, which was the language of priests and of learned texts.
• Because rulers used Prakrit in their inscriptions, historians often write early rulers' names in their Prakrit forms:
• Ajatasattu (Sanskrit form: Ajatashatru)
• Asoka (Sanskrit form: Ashoka)

Prakrit in inscriptions

• The earliest Indian inscriptions are in Prakrit.
• Later inscriptions and those from other regions use Pali, Tamil and Sanskrit.
• Asoka's inscriptions show how one language could be written in different scripts:
• In most of the subcontinent, Prakrit was written in the Brahmi script.
• In the north-west, Prakrit was written in the Kharosthi script.

• In Afghanistan, the inscriptions used other languages: Aramaic and Greek.

• Why a king would use Prakrit:

• Asoka wanted his orders and his ideas of dhamma (moral rules for good conduct) to reach ordinary subjects.
• So he used the language people actually spoke, not the language of priests.

Prakrit and the decipherment of scripts (1830s)

• The Sanskrit mistake:
• At first, European scholars wrongly assumed that the language of the Brahmi inscriptions was Sanskrit.
• So their attempts to read them failed.

• The breakthrough came once they saw that the language was Prakrit.

• Brahmi:

• European scholars, helped by Indian pandits, worked backwards from scripts they already knew, Bengali and Devanagari, to the older Brahmi letters.

• Asokan Brahmi was read in 1838. Britannica gives 1837 for the decipherment of Asoka's edicts. [2]

• Kharosthi:

• Indo-Greek coins (c. 2nd–1st centuries BCE) showed the same king's name, for example Apollodotus, in both Greek and Kharosthi.
• Scholars matched each Kharosthi letter with its Greek partner.
• James Prinsep then identified the language of these Kharosthi records as Prakrit.

Results

• Once scholars could read Prakrit inscriptions, they could prove that piyadassi ("pleasant to behold") and devanampiya ("beloved of the gods") referred to Asoka, the king already known from Buddhist texts.
• Votive inscriptions (short records of gifts, from the 2nd century BCE) could now be read too. In them, washerfolk, weavers, potters, goldsmiths and women donors name themselves. This let historians write the history of ordinary people.
• By the early 20th century, the broad outline of dynastic history was settled, and much of it rested on these early inscriptions.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: the earliest Indian inscriptions, especially the Mauryan period under Asoka (3rd century BCE). The Prakrit records on Indo-Greek coins date to c. 2nd–1st centuries BCE.
• Region: Prakrit in Brahmi across most of the subcontinent. Prakrit in Kharosthi in the north-west. Asoka's inscriptions in Afghanistan used Aramaic and Greek instead.
• Key people:
• Asoka, who issued most of the early Prakrit inscriptions.
• James Prinsep, assay master at the Benares mint (1820–30) and later the Calcutta mint (from 1832). [2] He deciphered both Brahmi and Kharosthi and showed that the Kharosthi records were in Prakrit. He was the first European scholar to decipher Asoka's edicts. [2]
• Indian pandits, who helped work back from Bengali and Devanagari.

• Alexander Cunningham, who published the Asokan inscriptions in 1877.

• How we know:

• Asoka's inscriptions on stone.
• Bilingual Indo-Greek coins.
• Votive inscriptions.
• Today the ASI's Epigraphy Branch (Mysore) studies inscriptions from the Mauryan period onwards. [3]

Don't confuse with

• Sanskrit: the language of priests and learned texts. Prakrit was the spoken language of ordinary people. The earliest inscriptions are in Prakrit, not Sanskrit. Early decipherment failed because scholars assumed they were in Sanskrit.
• Brahmi: a script (a way of writing), not a language. Most of Asoka's Prakrit inscriptions are written in Brahmi. Brahmi is the parent of Devanagari and of scripts used for Dravidian languages. [4]
• Kharosthi: also a script, used in the north-west to write Prakrit. It was cracked with the help of Greek–Kharosthi coins. Brahmi was read by working back from Bengali and Devanagari.
• Aramaic and Greek: these are the languages of Asoka's inscriptions in Afghanistan. They are not scripts for Prakrit.

Prelims Hooks

• The earliest Indian inscriptions are in Prakrit, not Sanskrit or Pali.
• Most Asokan inscriptions: Prakrit language + Brahmi script. In the north-west: Prakrit + Kharosthi. In Afghanistan: Aramaic and Greek.
• Trap: "Brahmi and Kharosthi are languages". This is wrong. They are scripts. Prakrit is the language.
• James Prinsep identified the language of the Kharosthi records on Indo-Greek coins (e.g. Apollodotus) as Prakrit.
• Asokan Brahmi was read in 1838 (NCERT). Britannica gives 1837. [2]
• Ajatasattu and Asoka are Prakrit forms of names. Ajatashatru and Ashoka are the Sanskrit forms.

Mains Points

• Language as a tool of rule: Asoka chose Prakrit, the language people spoke, and wrote it in local scripts. He used Aramaic and Greek in Afghanistan. This shows a ruler trying to speak directly to a varied population across a large empire, instead of only through priests and their Sanskrit.
• A wrong assumption can block knowledge: scholars first assumed that old Indian inscriptions must be in Sanskrit, and so they could not read them. Brahmi was read only after they recognised Prakrit, with Indian pandits helping. This is a useful example for questions on colonial knowledge production and on how biases shape history-writing.
• Prakrit opened up history from below: Prakrit inscriptions, especially votive records, name weavers, potters, goldsmiths and women donors. They let historians study ordinary people, who rarely appear in Sanskrit literary texts. But only those who could pay for an inscription appear in them, so the picture is still partial.

Related concepts

• Inscription
• Epigraphy
• Palaeography
• Votive inscriptions
• Aihole inscription
• Copper plate inscriptions
• Asiatic Society of Bengal
• James Prinsep
• Brahmi script
• Brahmi numerals

Read more

• Epigraphy: inscriptions and their decipherment