In the second place, Sanskritisation means the use of Sanskrit in Buddhist texts as a replacement for the dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan in which the Buddha’s teachings had previously been transmitted for some hundreds of years. In this sense, the term is applicable to the whole range of Buddhist texts starting from those in a Prakrit which contains a very small amount of Sanskrit, or Sanskrit-like, forms in it,
through a range of texts which are in a variety of languages which might be regarded as Sanskritised Prakrit or Prakritised Sanskrit, sometimes called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, to texts which are in pure classical Sanskrit, in accordance with Paninian grammar. The language of the last group is classified by some as Buddhist Sanskrit, because the texts are written by Buddhists about some aspect of Buddhism or Buddhist history, and perhaps contain items of vocabulary which are specifically Buddhist.