So... now we have at least one point to agree, that Prakrit is not derived/evolved from Sanskrit as they teach in our schools.
It is also proved that I am not on as weak ground as you said. Now come to your another counter argument.
Stating that Prakrit and Sanskrit developed in parallel, that Prakrit was not 'descended' from Sanskrit was not the weak ground that you were on. They are on display in the rest of your note below.
You said that Sanskrit was evolving separately from Prakrit. But you have not given any evidence and also not any logic or reason for this argument.
I did not say that. I said, very clearly, that Sanskrit was a one-man show:
Sanskrit came nowhere in the picture, for one thing, because it was in the process of being codified from Indo-Aryan by a grammarian named Panini, roughly around the same time, 600 BC (exact dates are impossible to establish, because of the lack of written records, and because names, personalities, life-spans, and events are all derived indirectly). What Panini did is worth investigating, rather than jumping to the wrong conclusions: he took the late version of Indo-Aryan, that was spoken in the Punjab and before the movement of the centre of political power to Magadha from the older centres of Indo-Aryan civilisation, the Kuru-Panchal territory, and standardised it. He took archaic verb forms, eliminated the archaic forms no longer in use in late versions of Indo-Aryan, and he took unused and obsolete nouns and eliminated those also. A comparison of the Vedic language, the language (here referred to as Indo-Aryan) of the Vedas, and of 'classical' Sanskrit will show the changes.
I hope you get the picture.
The second advice I will give you is to stop thinking logically, on first principles, and to start thinking in terms of the actual occurrences and historical evidence that is available.
I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but you have fallen into the error of the revisionists, who have come to their own 'first-principles' reasons for concluding, without grounds, various erroneous reconstructions of history. Unfortunately Clio does not follow straight-line logic; she wanders around as she will and things happen as they do, not as they ought to have.
If you think logically, it is not possible that if a language was being used in any era for a sufficient period, it must have not left any evidence. Let's assume for the argument sake that manuscripts were destroyed. But where are inscriptions ? Is it possible that a language was being used only in manuscripts and not in inscriptions ?
If you disengage your Brahminical sense of logic and development of argument, and place your feet on the ground, you will realise without being prompted that a popular inscription will be in the demotic versions of the languages and dialects being used.
Sanskrit was a reconstruction, not a living language, a reconstruction from a language and a style that had already passed into history. It was obviously not suitable for use in inscriptions.
Again, you have concluded that there may have been Sanskrit manuscripts. That is a dangerous conclusion. The holy books were carefully preserved by the priests and restricted in their circulation, as it is even today. If you search for his posts by name, you will find that a member named
@IFB has given an excellent review of the state of Hindu scripture even today, that applies forcefully to that period and to the usage then, a usage that has descended unbroken down to the current holders of the knowledge of the Vedas.
The use of manuscript for the holy books, therefore of the 'holy' language, or of the codified version of the original 'holy' language as well as the original, was minimal, if it existed at all.
And when it started mingling with Prakrit then it must have changed and gone towards more Prakritized version over the natural course of period ??
But as we can see, there are tons of evidences indicating that it was Prakrit which was continuously deteriorating into Sanskrit and not vice versa.
LOL.
You have a fine mind and your teachers must have had a very pleasant time teaching you....once they got you to look at facts and come away from purely mental reconstructions.
I re-state the evidence and the status once more: Sanskrit was a language codified with very well-defined rules of grammar, done with a skill and complete command over the subject that astonished linguists and grammarians centuries after he worked.
It was not susceptible to grammatical changes, at all. There have been NO changes in Sanskrit grammar from the Ashtadhyayi onwards.
This codification was done on a living language, Indo-Aryan, that changed over the centuries; that was a strong motive for Panini to undertake his work of codification and to fix the rules once and for all time to come.
So, too, was Prakrit a living language, that never had much effort dedicated to it, because it was the people's language, not the language that the Gods spoke. It moved around; its grammar changed.
THAT is why Prakrit moved closer to Sanskrit, and not the other way around.
TO BE CONTINUED
Now, what is the logic behind the statement that Sanskrit is the pidgin language ?
Well... It is a pidgin of Old Persian and Prakrit/Pali. You can see from inscriptions that pidgin form of Sanskrit first evolved in the area of Iranian bordering area, i.e. present Pakistan (KPK area to be precise)
If you study the inscriptions, you will find that where DHAMMA(धम्म) was written in Ashoka's inscriptions of Northern India, it was being written as DHRAMA (ध्रम) in the Shahbaz Gadhi (Peshawar) inscriptions. This DHRAMA was later evolved as DHARMA (धर्म) in Rudra damana's inscriptions.
Where PIYADASI (पियदसी) has been written in Ashoka's Northern Indian inscriptions, it was being written as PRIYADRASHI (प्रियद्रशि) in Shahbaz Gadhi inscriptions, and later evolved as PRIYADRASHI (प्रियदर्शी) in Rudradaman's inscriptions.
Thus, we can see that DHAMMA was evolved into DHRAMA in pidgin Sanskrit and later converted into DHARMA as classical Sanskrit. In the same manner PIYADASI made its journey through PRIYADRASHI in pidgin version upto PRIYDARSHI as classical Sanskrit.
PS: Panini was Rajpurohit of Pushymitra Shunga as par Rahul Sankrityayan. He was never there before Shungas as per logic and reasoning. Because...
If he would have codified Sanskrit in 500 BC, we would have not seen pidgin version of Sanskrit in later ages inscriptions.
Regards.