srkris wrote:prAk+kritam- prAkritam- the one done before
This is a common mistranslation. prAkRtam does not mean original. It the context of languages, it means natural/common i.e artless.
saMskRta means well-formed or ornamented.
It is also a misconception that prAkRta was refined to obtain saMskRta. In fact these are just vAks (or modes of speech) of the same language. One was ornamented/refined speech and the other was crude/common speech.
Many people who dont understand historical linguistics tend to apply the formula that a refined language is obtained from the refinement of a crude language. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact this misconception arises out of wrong translations.
More specifically prakrits are classified by linguists as Middle-Indic or Middle-Indo-Aryan while Sanskrit (both classical and Vedic) are classified under Old-Indo-Aryan or Old-Indic.
What this means is that Old-Indic preceeded Middle-Indic and the latter evolved out of the former, not by a process of growth but of decay.
Classical sanskrit lost a bit of vedic sanskrit's features, but in prakrits, these changes (losses) are very high.
Namskaar,
You and a whole lot of other contributors have assumed that Sanskrit was more refined and Prakrits were crude. This is a an over-simplification and ignores how labguages transform themselves and morph into something else.
Sanskrit (which I admire tremedously) was prevalent in India when India was a relatively homogenous social entity and BTW was geographically not the sme as it is today. When, Indian
subcontinent began to be exposed to "foreigners", it must not have been possible to communicate with them with the same insistence on grammatical and etymological purity. This hardly needs to be debated. When someone speaks a foreign learners" (be it Chinese, Greeks or Arabs) level of Sanskrit, it is a hassle to speak purest form of GirvanBharati with them. If someone is buying a ton of black pepper from me but speaks impure Sanskrit, I would also adopt "impure" Sanskrit and make the sale. People do not do things for no reason.
What happened was a simplification of Sanskrit towards Prakrit. Sanskrit took too long with its multitude of vibhakti pratyas and atmenpads and parasmaipads.
Yes, Sanskrit is a wondeful language with its richesse of literaure and poetry but so are Prakrits. In Marathi, we have had many great Saint-Poets who have written poetry that compares with the best in Sanskrit. The same can be said for other Indian languages with which I am not equally familiar.
I hope I have not offended anyone with my 2 cents worth.