ପୃଷ୍ଠା:Typical selections from Oriya literature.pdf/୨୦

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INTRODUCTION.

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Utkala country, though situated Bengal or rather on the frontier of Bengal, did not adopt either the speech or the script of Northern India. We also learn from the account of Huen Tsiang that the people of Kalinga in the Ganjam district had their own Dravidian tongue, and were different from the people of Orissa in every respect. This clearly demonstrates that neither the script nor the language of the inscriptions of the 3rd as well as of the 2nd century B.C., came to be operative either in Upper Kalinga or in any part of Orissa. We see how unsafe it is to make any inference regarding the language of a province, with reference to the language of the inscriptions which the Emperor Asoka published in that province. It is a fact that no section of the Dravidians had any script of its own If then, in any province to the end of the 6th century A.D.* in the district of Puri, while the

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inhabited by the Dravidians, the recording of any fact was entrusted in ancient time to the religious teachers of Northern India, and the record, in consequence thereof, appeared in the language of the writers, the Dravidians of those days cannot be said to have then adopted that language. The earliest reference we get of the adoption of a corrupt form of the Magadhi speech by the Odras, as well as by their close neighbours, the Sabaras, is in the Natya Sastra," which is fathered upon BharataMuni. It is uncertain as to when this book was composed reference to it by other authors makes it tolerably certain that the book is not later in date than the 6th century A.D. to place it again beyond the upper limit of the 3rd century is rather difficult. It has been stated in the 17th chapter of this work, that when the barbarians including the Odras and the Sabaras have to be represented on the stage, they should be made to speak what has been technically called in the book as bibhasa " {vide slokas 44,47.. etc.). The term bibhasa " has not been properly defined there has been a thorough examination of the term by Sir George Grierson in J.R.A.S., 1918 (pp. 489-517), but its import remains still doubtful. I cannot enter here into any discussion on the point, but I may state without any fear of contradiction that the dramatic characters in ancient time were not required to speak different tongues on the stage, but had only to corrupt or modify the pronunciation of the standard Prakrta words, now here and now there, with some noted provincial or tribal peculiarities, just to suggest the class to which the characters belonged. It is therefore impossible to ascertain what was the real nature of the "' bibhasa " of a particular tribe. It is however very important and interesting that the Odras appear in the " Natya Sastra " in the company of the Sabaras and other rude forest tribes. It may be gathered from the statements of various authorities cited by Sir George Grierson in his learned paper referred to above, that many people of various non- Aryan

  • Reference by Huen Tsiang in the 7th century A.D. of a f^pecial script of the

people of Vengi is the earliest reference to Tclegu script. All epigraphists admit that the Battalattu alphabet of the Tamil people cannot be proved to have been introduced earlier than the 8th century A. D. tlie grantha character is known to have been introduced in the 10th century A D.