What were the languages of communication among ordinary people in times of Ramayana and Mahabharata?
During war and in courts, marketplaces and travel Sanskrit could not have been used as it is more for prayers, Vedic scripts and speeches among scholars.
Great question on Literature with righteousness:
DIALECTS of HUMAN MASSES
Two dialects were used by earlier (Advanced) humans : namely
Nagari scripts & lingual arts(Joy of communication between families)
Pali scripts(Siddhartha Buddha used to derive many simple dialects from it) & text arts
SANSKRIT
Sanskrit was always used for worshipping Divine truth. Those who witnessed God's avatar were experts in all such dialects but they only wrote the happenings in Sanskrit when God was having conversation with those destined to be liberated by God.
Ancient languages spoken slangs of Sindhi, Pahadi, Urdu etc were very close to Pali.
Ancient languages like Hindi, Hebrew, German/French etc were very close to Nagari. Conflicts of Interest
Though there may be conflicts of interest between Historians of different places obviously due to variation in RACE, when one learns words of such languages, one can happily realise the roots as very Great attributing the linguistic articulation to the civilisation along the mountain ranges from Black sea in West to Arunaachal in East.
SOUTHERN PROOF
Proof: "Achyuta Shatakam"(by Swami Desikan) - elucidates the easily spoken language similar to partial-sanskrit & Praakritam but not Nagari. It was used in olden days DANCE DRAMAs with songs (What is now understood as KARANAATAK). Similar linguistic intellect existed in North belt during War times.
