background; for example, Dramili was the language of "forest-dwellers", Sauraseni was spoken by "the heroine and her female friends", and Avanti was spoken by "cheats and rogues". Maharashtri and Shaurseni Prakrit were more common and were used in literature extensively. Status Under the Mauryan Empire various Prakrits enjoyed the status of royal language. Pali was the language of Emperor Ashoka who was patron of Buddhism. Prakrit languages are said to have held a lower social status than Sanskrit in classical India. In the Sanskrit stage plays, such as Kalidasa's Shakuntala, lead characters typically speak Sanskrit, while the unimportant characters and most female characters typically speak Prakrit. While Prakrits were originally seen as 'lower' forms of language, the influence they had on Sanskrit - allowing it to be more easily used by the common people - as well as the converse influence of Sanskrit on the Prakrits, gave Prakrits progressively higher cultural cachet. Mirza Khan's Tuhfat al-hind (1676) characterizes Prakrit as the language of "the lowest of the low", stating that the language was known as Patal-bani ("Language of the underground") or Nag-bani ("Language of the snakes"). The 16th-century Ain-e-Akbari relates that Akbar was illiterate due to his father's exile and prolonged wars; therefore he spoke a broken language which cannot be termed as "higher status language". Among modern scholars, Prakrit literature has received less attention than Sanskrit. Few modern Prakrit texts have survived in modern times, and even fewer have been published or attracted critical scholarship. Prakrit has not been designated as a classical language by the Government of India, although the earliest Prakrit texts are older than literature of most of the languages designated as such. One of the reasons behind this neglect of Prakrit is that it is not tied to a regional, national, ethnic, or religious identity. Research institutes In 1955, government of Bihar established at Vaishali, the Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology and Ahimsa with the aim to promote research work in Prakrit. The National Institute of Prakrit Study and Research is located in Shravanabelagola, Karnataka, India. References Bibliography Further reading Pischel, R. Grammar of the Prakrit Languages. New York: Motilal Books, 1999. Indo-Aryan languages Languages of India Languages attested from the 3rd century BC Formal languages used for Indian scriptures