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APPENDIX.
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enables a writer to express all the varied shades of his ideas, and the niceties of its structure, I confess I felt disappointed in turning to the Prákrit; but after advancing a little in the knowledge of the language, I feel bound to concede that, by its greater simplicity of construction, and superior facility of enunciation, the Prákrit may easily bear away the palm from its rival as a simple, yet polished and harmonious vehicle of human thought, admirably fitted to be the spoken tongue of a great and refined nation; and if the reader will look back to the “explanation of Trisalá’s dream," he will readily conceive that the language in which thoughts so varied and beautiful can be conveyed with ease and grace, must be something more than a jargon.
In the peculiar dialect of Prákrit termed Mágadhí, the first point mentioned by Vararuchi is the substitution of 1 (s) for 7 (s), and a (sh) (THT: 7). In the common dialect, on the contrary, 7 (6) and a (sh) become
(s). Now it is a strong confirmation of this rule of the grammarian to find, that on the Ganges, whence we may suppose the model of the common Prakrit to have been taken, in all the different dialects of Hindi and Hin dustani, the 7 (s) is the only sibilant used, while in the Maráthi country, which anciently fell within the limits of the kingdom of Mágadha, the (s) is the favourite sibilant, being by the common people always substituted for H (s) before the palatine vowels 5 (i) and T (e), and the semi-vowel q (y); thus, wat (sevá) becomes
