of Pƒ–ini was a spoken vernacular at the time when that great grammarian flourished. In the same paper he maintains that Sanskrit was the source of the Prƒkrits, and quotes Vararuci's Prƒkrita-Prakƒsa xii, 2 (Prƒkriti SamskŠitam ‘Sanskrit is the source’). Of course the provincialized Prakrits though not as I believe, derived directly from the learned language, but developed independently borrowed largely from the Sanskrit after it was thus elaborated.¹

     Nothing strikes a lexicographer of any nationality more, on examining the dictionaries of the Sanskrit dialect, than their organized and uniform avoidance of information as to the source of all loan-words, and their rigid and avowed policy of showing all words in Sanskrit to be exclusively of Aryan origin, in comparison with those of other languages. But, it is still more striking that the Sanskrit Dictionaries compiled by Western scholars also should be of the same type, especially after Dr. Caldwell wrote “The comparative method of study has done much, in every department of science, for Europe, might it not be expected to do much for India also.”²

     Professor Monier Williams was evidently not aware of the fact that Sanskrit is a composite literary dialect evolved out of the dead Vedic language and the then regional languages called Prƒkrits. Consequently he tries to sow almost all words found in Sanskrit to be of Aryan origin, by means of plausible tendentious and absurd etymologies or even without them. I shall here quote some of them as samples.

     “ambƒ f. (Ved. voc. ambe [V.S.] or amba [R.V.], in later Sanskrit amba only, sometimes a mere interjection, ƒšv Sr.) a mother, good woman (as a title of respect); .....N: of Durgƒ (the wife of šiva); ....... In the South-Indian languages, ambƒ is corrupted into ammƒ, and is often affixed to the names of goddesses, and females in general [Germ Amme, ‘a nurse; Old. Germ. amma, Them amm†n, amm‡n].”