Magadhi Prakrit is of one of the three
Dramatic Prakrits, the written languages of
Ancient India following the decline of
Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was spoken in the eastern
Indian subcontinent, in a region spanning what is now
eastern India,
Bangladesh, and
Nepal. It is believed to be the language spoken by
Gautama Buddha, and the language of the ancient kingdom of
Magadha. It was the official language of the
Mauryan court, and the edicts of
Ashoka were composed in it.
Magadhi Prakrit later evolved into the
Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, including
Oriya,
Bengali,
Assamese, and the
Bihari languages (
Bhojpuri,
Maithili, and
Magahi, among others).
Pali and Ardha-Magadhi
Theravada Buddhist tradition has long held that the
Pāli language was synonymous with the ancient Magadha language; and indeed, there are many remarkable analogies between Pāli and an old form of Magadhi Prakrit known as
Ardhamagadhi ("Half Magadhi"), which is preserved in ancient
Jain texts. (Both the
Buddha and the Jain
Mahavirapreached in ancient Magadha ).
The most archaic of the Middle Indo-Aryan languages are the inscriptional Aśokan Prakrit on the one hand and Pāli and Ardhamāgadhī on the other, both literary languages.
The Indo-Aryan languages are commonly assigned to three major groups - Old, Middle and New Indo-Aryan -, a linguistic and not strictly chronological classification as the MIA languages ar not younger than ('Classical') Sanskrit. And a number of their morphophonological and lexical features betray the fact that they are not direct continuations of Ṛgvedic Sanskrit, the main base of 'Classical' Sanskrit; rather they descend from dialects which, despite many similarities, were different from Ṛgvedic and in some regards even more archaic.
MIA languages, though individually distinct, share features of phonology and morphology which characterize them as parallel descendants of Old Indo-Aryan. Various sound changes are typical of the MIA phonology:
(1) The vocalic liquids 'ṛ' and 'ḷ' are replaced by 'a', 'i' or 'u';
(2) the diptongs 'ai' and 'au' are monophthongized to 'e' and 'o';
(3) long vowels before two or more consonants are shortened;
(4) the three sibilants of OIA are reduced to one, either 'ś' or 's';
(5) the often complex consonant clusters of OIA are reduced to more readily pronounceable forms, either by assimilation or by splitting;
(6) single intervocalic stops are progressively weakened;
(7) dentals are palatalized by a following '-y-';
(8) all final consonants except '-ṃ' are dropped unless they are retained in 'sandhi' junctions.
The most conspicuous features of the morphological system of these languages are: loss of the dual; thematicization of consonantal stems; merger of the f. 'i-/u-' and 'ī-/ū-' in one 'ī-/ū-' inflexion, elimination of the dative, whose functions are taken over by the genitive, simultaneous use of different case-endings in one paradigm; employment of 'mahyaṃ' and 'tubhyaṃ' as genitives and 'me' and 'te' as instrumentals; gradual disappearance of the middle voice; coexistence of historical and new verbal forms based on the present stem; and use of active endings for the passive. In the vocabulary, the MIA languages are mostly dependent on Old Indo-Aryan, with addition of a few so-called 'deśī' words of (often) uncertain origin.
Ardhamagadhi differs from later Magadhi Prakrit on similar points as Pāli. For example, Ardhamagadhi preserves historical
l, unlike later Magadhi Prakrit, where
l changed into
r. Additionally, in the noun inflection, Ardhamagadhi shows the ending
-o instead of Magadhi Prakrit
-e at least in many metrical places. This similarity is not accidental, since
Mahavira, the 24th
Tirthankara of
Jainism preached in the same area (Magadha) as
Buddha Gotama.
Dhammapada verse 103:
103. Yo sahassaṃ sahassena, saṅgāme mānuse jine;
Ekañca jeyyamattānaṃ, sa ve saṅgāmajuttamo.
Greater in battle than the man who would conquer a thousand-thousand men,
is he who would conquer just one — himself.
Jain Samana sutta 125:
Jo sahassam sahassanam, samgame dujjae jine.
Egam jinejja appanam, esa se paramo jao. (125)
One may conquer thousands and thousands of enemies in an invincible battle;
but the supreme victory consists in conquest over one's self.
References and footnotes
See also
