The most prominent form of Prakrit is Ardhamāgadhı̄, associated with the ancient kingdom of Magadha, in modern Bihar, and the subsequent Mauryan Empire.

This is one of several views noted, for example, by Nami Sadhu (11th century ce) in his commentary on Rudraṭa’s Kāvyālaṅkāra (“Ornaments of Poetry”), a 9th-century treatise on poetics.

In contrast, the view most commonly held by Prakrit grammarians holds that the Prakrit languages are vernaculars that arose from Sanskrit:[7] The dictionary of Monier Monier-Williams (1819–1899), and other modern authors, however, interpret the word in the opposite sense: “The most frequent meanings of the term prakṛta, from which the word ‘prakrit’ is derived, are ‘original, natural, normal’ and the term is derived from prakṛti, ‘making or placing before or at first, the original or natural form or condition of anything, original or primary substance.’” Modern scholars have used the term "Prakrit" to refer to two concepts:[10] Some modern scholars include all Middle Indo-Aryan languages under the rubric of 'Prakrits', while others emphasize the independent development of these languages, often separated from the history of Sanskrit by wide divisions of caste, religion, and geography.

[11] The broadest definition uses the term "Prakrit" to describe any Middle Indo-Aryan language that deviates from Sanskrit in any manner.

[16] German Indologist Theodor Bloch (1894) dismissed the medieval Prakrit grammarians as unreliable, arguing that they were not qualified to describe the language of the texts composed centuries before them.

[17] It is possible that the grammarians sought to codify only the language of the earliest classics of the Prakrit literature, such as the Gaha Sattasai.

[21] Several modern scholars, such as George Abraham Grierson and Richard Pischel, have asserted that the literary Prakrit does not represent the actual languages spoken by the common people of ancient India.

[21]The local variants of Apabhramsha evolved into the modern day Indo-Aryan vernaculars of South Asia.

[24] Dandin's Kavya-darsha (c. 700) mentions four kinds of literary languages: Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, and mixed.

[26] During a large period of the first millennium, literary Prakrit was the preferred language for the fictional romance in India.

Its use as a language of systematic knowledge was limited, because of Sanskrit's dominance in this area, but nevertheless, Prakrit texts exist on topics such as grammar, lexicography, metrics, alchemy, medicine, divination, and gemology.

[29] American scholar Andrew Ollett traces the origin of the Sanskrit Kavya to Prakrit poems.

These include Prachya, Bahliki, Dakshinatya, Shakari, Chandali, Shabari, Abhiri, Dramili, and Odri.

Some 19th–20th century European scholars, such as Hermann Jacobi and Ernst Leumann, made a distinction between Jain and non-Jain Prakrit literature.