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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
Introduction.
19
In nearly all cases where the Çauraseni and the Mâgadhî differ from the common Prakrit, the Jaina Prakrit conforms to the latter, except in the instance quoted above, and two more. Hemacandra (IV, 264, 265. IV, 278) prescribes for the Çaurasenî (and Mâgadhî) the nominatives and vocatives bhayavam and maghavam for bhagavân, bhagavan and maghavân, maghavan, and the form tâ for tasmớt. These forms occur also in the Jaina Prakrit. These instances of coincidence of the Jaina Prâkrit with other Prâkrits than Mâhârâshtrî are few and unimportant, compared with those in which it conforms to the common dialect. I, therefore, do not hesitate to declare the Jaina Prakrit to be Mâhârâshtrî. as has already been done by Chr. Lassen in his Institutiones linguae Pracriticae p. 42. In those cases in which Jaina Prâkrit differs from the Mâhârâshtrî, it has usually retained the older forms. A trace of a still older phase of the language has been noticed above p. 4., it is the optional insertion of a vowel which is always inserted in the written language between two consonants incapable of assimilation. This freedom which is required for the scanning of Prakṣit verses in the old sûtras, and which has some resemblance to the practice of the Vedic poets, is no more allowed by the later Prakrit poets. In their compositions, every vowel must necessarily be pronounced as one syllable. The difference between the practice observed in works like the Setubandha, the Saptaçataka, the later Prâkrit stotras, etc., and that in the older metrical sûtras, can only be explained by a change of the language similar to that of the Vedic idiom to classical Samskrit ).
As yet we have only traced the gradual development of the language in the sacred writings of the Jainas. But some of its irregularities are of a different kind. They seem to show that the dialect was originally different from that in which the sûtras are written. Thus the è of the nominative masculine is, most probably, preserved from the original Mâgadhî, which was, as I have pointed out above, the language of Mahâvîra and his Gaņadharas. To sum up, the language of the Jaina writings has not
Tah (older forms of which aro ah and Toh) and 3, it should be kept in mind, as Dr. Bühler tells me, that the Jainas, in combining their letters, usually place the second letter below, and not behind, the first. The former signs will readily be recognised as gradual simplifications of and in the latter the old
form of j, E, catches the eye. In the text of the Kalpasatra, I have, accordingly, transcribed the groups in question by kkh and jj.
1) The optional insertion of a vowel, chiefly before y and v, in the Vedas, was entirely rejected in the later Samskrit, while the insertion of the vowel which is optional in the Jaina Prakrit, became the rule in the later Prakrit, provided the group of consonants was not assimilated.
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