Prakrit, a group of Indo-Aryan languages, has garnered negligible attention. However, recently, the Union Cabinet declared it a classical language. As opposed to Sanskrit, primarily spoken by the elites and used in the classical texts to denote the speech of royalty, Prakrit had emerged as the language of the public. Several edicts from the 3rd century BC to 2nd century AD as well as the oldest Jain sutras were composed in Prakrit. Historian AL Basham noted its use in the speech of women in drama. Professor Andrew Ollett of the University of Chicago refused to call it “Just a curio in the cabinet” of Indian languages. He remarked, “It is the key to understanding how literary languages worked in premodern India as a whole.”

Vedang Joshi and Megha Natekar