views of the Buddhists and the Jains the vernaculars were elevated to the rank of literary languages. But the fall of these popular religions was followed by the neglect of the vernaculars. The Brahman Gunadhya composed the Brihatkatha in the Paisachi dialect, the tongue of the degraded classes, in the first or second century A. D. but his work was treated with contempt by his fellow sanskrit scholars.
The scriptures of the Brahmans have always been a sealed book to the masses. Every attempt to translate a religious hook into the vernacular of the people was regarded as heresy and condemned by the orthodox. Long before the British influence was felt in our country, even prior to the Mahammedan conquest of the Dakkan, there flourished under the rule of the Yadava Kings of Devagiri a holy man, named Dhyandev who is looked upon as the first saint and prophet of Maharashtra; he wrote his famous commentary on the Bhagavatgita in the spoken language of the country. The late Mr. Justice Ranade gives a long list of celebrated writers who have made the Marathi literature and observes:—"A more brilliant galaxy of names it would be difficult to find in the literature of any other language of India. To seek to minimise the value of this treasure by saying that it is only a reflex of sanskrit poetry is to confess ignorance of
