_The Prākrits._ Before I leave the Aryan languages of India, I must give a brief summary of what Sir George Grierson says of the Prākrits, the spoken speeches which have always, implicitly or explicitly, been distinguished from the artificial and literary Sanskrit. The Primary Prākrits of the Midland and Outer Band (of which latter no record survives) were of the same type as the Latin known to us in literature. They were synthetic and inflected languages. These gradually decayed (or developed) into what Sir G. Grierson calls the Secondary Prākrits. These are still synthetic, but diphthongs and harsh combinations of consonants are avoided, "till in the latest developments we find a condition of almost absolute fluidity, each language becoming an emasculated collection of vowels hanging for support on an occasional consonant." These Secondary Prākrits lasted from the days of the Buddha (550 B.C.) to about 1000 A.D. One at least of these Secondary Prākrits, Pāli, has obtained world-wide fame as the language of the Buddhist scriptures. Thus crystallised, it underwent the same fate as Sanskrit and became more or less what we call in Europe a "dead" language. In the Midland was a great and famous Prākrit called Sauraseni, after the Sanskrit name, Surasena, of the country round Mathura. In Bihār was Māgadhī; in Oudh and Baghelkhand was Ardha-māgadhī or "half Māgadhī"; south of these was Mahārāshtri, which is best known to students of the ancient Indian drama as the vehicle of the lyrics with which the plays are studded. Kings, sages, heroes and other noble characters speak Sanskrit. Inferior personages use Sauraseni. The Secondary Prākrits themselves degenerated into what Indian grammarians call Apabhramsas, "corrupt" or "decayed" tongues, which were used for literary purposes and finally became the parents of the great Aryan languages of the present time. For comparison with the preceding table of the Dravidian languages, I give below the census table of the Aryan languages as recorded in 1901:— Number of speakers A. Language of the Midland: Western Hindi 40,714,925 B. Intermediate languages. _a._ More nearly related to the Midland language: Rājasthānī 10,917,712 The Pahārī (or 'mountain') languages of the Himalaya 3,124,981 Gujarāti 9,439,925 Panjābi 17,070,961 _b._ More nearly related to the Outer languages: Eastern Hindi 22,136,358 C. Outer languages.