Another argument which offers itself for fixing the period of the composition of the sacred books, is the language in which they are written. But, unfortunately, it is not at all clear whether the sacred books have been handed down in that language in which they were composed, or in that in which they were pronounced, and transcribed in later generations, according to the then current idiom, till Devarddhi's edition put an end to the modernising of the language of the sacred books. I am inclined to believe the latter view to be correct, and look upon the absence of a self-consistent orthography of the Gaina Prakrit as the effect of the gradual change of the vernacular language in which the sacred books were recited. In all MSS. of Gaina texts, the same word is not always spelt in the same way. The differences of spelling refer chiefly to the retention, omission, or attenuation of single consonants between vowels, and the retention of the vowels e, o, before two consonants, or their change in i, u. It is hardly possible that the different spellings of a word should all correctly represent the pronunciation of that word at any given time, eg. bhuta, bhuya; udaga, udaya, uaya; lobha, loha , &c.; but probably we must regard these methods of spelling as historical spellings, that is to say, that all different spellings presented in the MSS. which formed the materials for Devarddhi's edition of the Siddhanta, were looked upon as authentical and were preserved in all later copies of the sacred texts. If this assumption is correct, we

must regard the most archaic spellings as representing the pronunciation at or shortly after the epoch of the composition of the sacred books, and the most modern one as representing the pronunciation at or shortly before the redaction of the Siddhanta . Now on comparing the Gaina Prakrit especially in the oldest form attainable with the Pali on one side, and the Prakrit of Hala, Setubandha, &c. on the other, it will appear to approach more the Pali than the later Prakrit. We may therefore conclude that chronologically also the sacred books of the Gainas stand nearer those of the Southern Buddhists than the works of later Prakrit writers.