Sauraseni Prakrit is a Middle Indo-Aryan language historically associated with the Surasena region around ancient Mathura in northern India, notable in general Sanskrit dramatic literature as the Prakrit register conventionally assigned to female and lower-status characters in classical Sanskrit plays, reflecting a broader convention in which different Prakrit dialects marked different social registers within a single dramatic text.
A specialized literary form known as Jain Shauraseni Prakrit developed as the primary scriptural language of Digambara Jainism, the Jain tradition distinct from the Ardhamagadhi-based Svetambara tradition, and became the language of major Digambara canonical and philosophical works composed in the centuries following the Common Era, once the original Jain teachings' Ardhamagadhi record had, in the Digambara view, been lost through incomplete oral transmission.
Sauraseni, like the other classical Prakrits, has no native speaker community today and survives purely as a literary and scriptural register studied by scholars of Sanskrit drama and Jain religious history. The ancient Sanskrit dramaturgical treatise Natyashastra, traditionally attributed to Bharata Muni, catalogs Sauraseni among several named Prakrits assigned to specific dramatic roles, a systematic linguistic hierarchy that itself illustrates how precisely classical Indian theater treated language choice as a marker of social and narrative meaning.