Category talk:Prakrit languages

Shouldn't we have a category on the separate prakrit languages, since they obviously aren't just one language.

List of Some Prakrits:

Magadhi Prakrit, Shauraseni, Maharashtri Prakrit

Pracya, Bahliki, Daksinatya, Sakari, Candali, Sabari, Abhiri, Dramili, Odri, and others DerekWinters (talk) 19:26, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Prakrit entries (contd.)

(Continuing the discussion that began here)

@Bhagadatta: For Prakrit citations, I think we need to take a leaf from our Chinese editors. Even though Chinese is a macrolanguage, it is a single language header here. So they have dedicated a separate category for Chinese quotes, and in some of the citation pages under that category, they have even mentioned the Chinese variety in which the text is written (such as Classical Chinese, Beijing Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.). — inqilābī ^{‹inqilāb·zinda·bād›} 20:47, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Inqilābī: That seems to handle it well. You think anyone would mind the entry & the citations being on separate pages? -- Bhagadatta^(talk) 02:12, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Inqilābī, Bhagadatta, Kutchkutch, शब्दशोधक: (Pinging everyone here just in case.) I am in support of this change. Having learned a great deal more about the historical development of the Indo-Aryan languages, it seems to me that it is very simplistic to say that e.g. Gujarati is a direct descendant of Sauraseni and Marathi is one of Maharastri, when it's clear that the two are far closer to each other then to Sauraseni-descended Hindi. There is a limitation in the tree model for describing Indo-Aryan, which has been noted by scholars since the time of Chatterji and Grierson. There's been so much contact historically between Indo-Aryan languages that a subcontinent-spanning dialectal continuum has formed. At the time of MIA the differences were even less, as evidenced by a sort of code-switching between MIA varieties we find in dramas and poetry. It seems that mutual unintelligibility is a necessity for language status on Wiktionary, and the individual Prakrits are not meeting that prerequisite--we will be dealing with a ton of entry duplication if we continue with the current structure.

One idea is to use something like the the Ashokan Prakrit dialect maps for Prakrit too. But that may be unnecessary given the limited number of Prakrits we are dealing with and the lack of well-organised geographical data for Prakrit. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 04:22, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Bhagadatta I also favour a different approach to Prakrit. It would be nice to see @Inqilābī and @शब्दशोधक making more Prakrit contributions that agree with the changed approach.

There's a citation for {{R:hi:Misra|122}}, so that term could be considered verified since this justification was used for creating the Sauraseni entries at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:R:hi:Misra.

Since {{R:pra:Sheth}} treats Maharastri as one of most attested lects (alongside Ardhamagadhi), instead of marking (Jain) Maharastri as (J)M as in {{R:inc:Pischel}} and {{R:inc:Woolner}}, the abbreviations usually refer to a text in which the term was found. For example, the abbreviation for the Gaha Sattasai is गा. This is the entry for :

अइक्कम aikkama पुं [अतिक्रम] १ अल्लंघन (गा ३४८) २ व्रत या नियम का आंशिक खण्डन (ठा ३ , ४)

The citation for the first sense is (गा ३४८), which refers line 348 of the Gaha Sattasai. The Prakrit text for the the Gaha Sattasai is here:

https://archive.org/details/dassaptaatakamd00webegoog

https://web.archive.org/web/20101110111335/http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ebene_1/fiindolo/gretil/2_prakrt/halsatsu.htm

The translation is here:

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=wsizcqxoQgsC

= विनय-अतिक्रम-आरत.

Thus, the first sense for could be verified as a Maharastri term. Kutchkutch (talk) 11:09, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Kutchkutch: Very good, thanks a lot for sharing the source of quotations! So the following are the proposals:

1. Merging all the Prakrits except Ashokan into the code "Prakrit".
2. Maharashtri and others will be reduced to etymology-only languages.
3. We will also have categories like [[Category:Sauraseni Prakrit]] so using {{lb|pra|Sauraseni}} will categorize a Prakrit entry as Sauraseni.
4. The descendant sections on Sanskrit entries will follow the existing pattern.

Also, as AryamanA said, dialect maps may be unnecessary as we are dealing with just four or five Prakrits, and also, we don't have sufficient geographical data for doing that.

Is this fine?-- Bhagadatta^(talk) 12:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Bhagadatta: Also, @Msasag Would the implications of:

Proposal 1 be that this change affects languages without the Prakrit suffix such as Pali, Gandhari and Helu since they are in CAT:Prakrit languages?

Proposal 2 be that the etymology sections of Hindi entries can use From Prakrit instead of From Sauraseni Prakrit if that suits the entry better?

Proposal 4 be that the descendants section of a unified Prakrit entry such as and would be a long list?

There will need to be a way to indicate dialectal differences in:

alternative forms: vs , {{hiatus-filler form of}}

declension: {{psu-decl-noun-a-m}} {{pmh-decl-noun}}, {{pmh-decl-noun-irregular}}, {{inc-mgd-decl-noun}}

derived terms: -क → vs , {{inc-extension}}

references: vs

other templates: {{pmh-g}}, {{pmh-verb set}}, {{inc-mgd-personal pronouns}}

Jain prefix: CAT:Jain Maharastri

AP:Middle Indo-Aryan Swadesh lists

CAT:Sauraseni Prakrit romanizations is not needed

Many of the names of the Prakrits are geographic, so perhaps a vague shape around the focal point could be of some use:

Saurasena, Magadha, Gandhara: c:File:Mahajanapadas (c. 500 BCE).png

Maharastri Prakrit: c:File:India 2nd century AD.jpg

Kamarupa: File:Kamarupa map.png Kutchkutch (talk) 15:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Kutchkutch: Neither will Pali and Gandhari be affected nor they'll be included in the code "Prakrit" for the following reasons:

1. Pali and Gandhari differ from the Prakrits to the extent that their mutual intelligibility with the Prakrits is affected (this is evident looking at the word forms of Pali vs Prakrit).
2. They both have a long history of their own separate identities; we have a DSAL dictionary dedicated wholly to Pali whereas dictionaries group the Prakrit lects together. The dramas would often have different characters speaking different Prakrits, which would not be the case of they were not mutually intelligible. (But then the same dramas would also feature Sanskrit, so I would not fall back on this point alone).
3. The objective of the proposal is to make citing sources and creating Prakrit entries easier because one won't need to go looking for the exact dialect of a given Pkt. word. It's also to achieve better accuracy in our depiction of the Indo-Aryan family tree (As mentioned above by AryamanA; also to be noted are the similarities between Bengali-Assamese and Marathi-Konkani in spite of the fact that the former descends from Magadhi Prakrit and the latter from Maharashtri). When we are considering this, Pali and Gandhari are unlikely to be affected.

For different altforms from different Prakrits, like vs , we can do what has been done at the page Sanskrit दृळ्ह (dṛḷha): {{alter|pra|𑀭𑀡𑁆𑀡||Maharastri, Ardhamagadhi}} and vice versa.

Hindi (and other IA) entries CAN use From Prakrit instead of From Sauraseni Prakrit, especially in entries where the same form is attested across the Prakrit continuum.

What remains unresolved is how to show declension; Magadhi, Maharashtri & Sauraseni seem to have similar declensions, with Magadhi being a bit different. I would suggest, instead of writing a new template/module, what we can do instead is input the existing templates on the entry. We can make a small edit to these templates so that {{pmh-decl-noun}} will display something like "Maharastri declension of <Pagename>" at the top and ditto for others. Sure it'll result in multiple tables on (most) pages but they're collapsed by default, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. I don't know if this is indeed the most desirable course of action.

Can't we show the references all together at the end of the page? I don't think it'll matter if a Sauraseni entry has a different reference; under the new Prakrit header, they'll all be shown together.

The issue of descendants in Prakrit entries now pops up. It'll certainly be a long list but that in of itself won't be a problem. I'm concerned about how we will categorize them in the descendants now. Anyone got ideas? -- Bhagadatta^(talk) 16:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)