Old Western Rājasthāni

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).

Literature

Major works were written in various genres, for the most part in verse form, such as:

• rāsa, predominantly didactic narrative, of which the earliest known is Śālibhadrasūri's Bhārateśvarabāhubali (1185).
• phāgu, in which springtime is celebrated, of which the earliest is Jinapadmasūri's Sirithūlibadda (c. 1335). The most famous is the Vasantavilāsa, of unknown authorship, which is undeterminedly dated to somewhere in 14th or 15th century, or possibly earlier.
• bārmāsī, describing natural beauty during each of the twelve months.
• ākhyāna, in which sections are each in a single metre.

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.