Maharashtri

Maharashtri Prakrit is a Prakrit language of ancient India, one of the principal literary Prakrits described in early grammars alongside Shauraseni and Magadhi. It developed in the western Indian subcontinent and is most closely associated with the region that is now Maharashtra, while also influencing neighboring areas in Gujarat and central India. The language was used as a medium of everyday speech and literature from roughly the 1st century BCE to the 7th–8th century CE, after which its varieties evolved into later western Indo-Aryan forms.

Maharashtri is well attested in Jain and Buddhist texts and in early Sanskrit drama, where it often serves as the spoken language of common folk or comic characters. In western India, its vocabulary and syntactic patterns contributed to the early stages of the Marathi language, and to some extent to Konkani; many later vernacular forms in these languages trace their ancestry to Maharashtri Prakrit and its Apabhraṣa descendants.

Scholars study Maharashtri from inscriptions, literary texts, and grammars of Prakrit; it was typically written in the Brahmi script, with later regional scripts deriving from Brahmi. The language is valuable for understanding the linguistic history of western India and the emergence of regional languages in the Deccan.

Name origin: Maharashtri derives from Maharashtra, the region of Maharashtra. The term identifies a language variety associated with western India and serves as a key link in the chain from Classical Prakrit to Modern Marathi.