the use of Sanskrit had almost entirely disappeared by Ashoka’s reign. Ashoka became an avowed Buddhist after he massacred one hundred thousand people in Magadha’s war with Kalinga. Buddhists shunned Sanskrit. They saw it as a language of the elite Brahmins and wanted their prayers to be understood by the common man. Ashoka’s inscriptions were thus written in Prakrit, the language of the masses, not Sanskrit. But this is Sanskrit!’
Sanskrit
