CHAPTER 7 A sociolinguistic scenario

This chapter briefly addresses the fourth research question formulated in §1.2: which sociolinguistic scenario accounts best for the Bactrian influence on Niya Prakrit? In §7.1, the conclusions reached in Chapters 3–6 are summarised. Based on them, I will in §7.2 distinguish two levels of language contact, viz. (i) a casual form of contact between Bactrian and Gāndhārī at large that resulted from the Kushan conquest of Gandhāra, and (ii) a more intense type of contact between Bactrian and the predecessor of Niya Prakrit. §7.3 argues that this second level of contact is due to Kushan officials using dialects of Gāndhārī for written administration – a hypothesis which, as pointed out in §7.4, receives further support from a comparison with the Old Persian influence on Achaemenid Official Aramaic.