Note 35 — IX VIÇĀKHADATTA AND BHAṬṬA NĀRĀYAṆA

The Sanskrit and the Prākrits offer no special features of interest. The latter is mainly in Çaurasenī, but the speeches of the Rākṣasa and his wife at the beginning of Act III are clearly in Māgadhī; they show the characteristic signs of e for the nominative singular, both masculine and neuter, of a-stems; l for r, and ā in the vocative of a-stems. The suggestion of Grill35 that the dialect is more precisely Ardha-Māgadhī is not necessary, for the points enumerated—the presence of s beside ç, the variation of o and aṁ in the nominative for e, and the use of jj for ry, and not yy—can be explained readily by the error of the scribes or the mistakes of the author. The freedom with which those worthies acted is seen clearly enough in the fact that one representative of the Bengālī as opposed to the Devanāgarī recension of the text has systematically rewritten the Prākrit into Çaurasenī.