Old Western Rājasthāni

Old Western Rājasthāni (also known as Maru-Gurjari, Old Gujarātī) is the ancestor of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages which developed from Sanskrit and the Prakrit Apabhraṃśas, and was spoken around 8-14th centuries in Western India. The literary form of Old Western Rājasthāni, the Dingala language was in use as early as the 12th century. While the spoken Old Western Rajasthani gave way to medieval forms of Rajasthani and Gujarati, it flourished in its literary form as Dingala till the 19th century.

Early texts of the language display characteristic features such as direct/oblique noun forms, postpositions, and auxiliary verbs. It had three genders, as Gujarati does today, and by around the time of 1300 CE, a fairly standardized form of this language emerged. The belief that modern Rajasthani sporadically expressed a neuter gender was based on the incorrect conclusion that the [ũ] that came to be pronounced in some areas for masculine [o] after a nasal consonant was analogous to Gujarati's neuter [ũ]. A formal grammar, Prakrita Vyakarana, of the precursor to this language, Gurjar Apabhraṃśa, was written by Jain monk and eminent scholar Acharya Hemachandra Suri in the reign of Chaulukya king Jayasimha Siddharaja of Anhilwara (Patan).