Old Western Rājasthāni

[5] Early texts of the language display characteristic features such as direct/oblique noun forms, postpositions, and auxiliary verbs.

[6] It had three genders, as Gujarati does today, and by around the time of 1300 CE, a fairly standardized form of this language emerged.

[7] 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).

[8] Major works were written in various genres, for the most part in verse form, such as:[9] Narsinh Mehta (c. 1414–1480) is traditionally viewed as the father of modern Gujarati poetry.

By virtue of its early age and good editing, an important prose work is the 14th-century commentary of Taruṇaprabha, the Ṣaḍāvaśyakabālabodhavr̥tti.

Updeshmala, Manuscript in Jain Prakrit and Old Gujarati on paper, Rupnagar, Rajasthan, India, 1666, 76 ff. (−16 ff.), 11x25 cm, single column, (10x22 cm), 4 lines main text, 2–4 lines of interlinear commentary for each text line, in Jain Devanagari book script, filled with red and yellow, 17 paintings in colours mostly of Śvetāmbara Jain monks, influenced by the Mughal style .

The text is a Prakrit didactic work of how best to live a proper Jain life, aimed probably at the laity. The Śvetāmbara pontiff, Sri Dharmadasagaî, lived in the mid-6th century. The Old Gujarati prose commentary was written in 1487. The colophon gives the place, date, and the name of the religious leader, Sri Nandalalaji, on whose order the work was transcribed.