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In Search of the Original Ardhamāgadhi
K.R. Chandra
In his Prasasti at the end of his Siddha-haimaśabdānuśāsanam, Hemacandra has declared, by way of a justification for composing a fresh grammar, that he has composed a faultless (niravama) and formal (vidhivat) grammar. Does this statement apply in the case of the Ardhamāgadhī? It seems, by his sutra Bahulam' and by its explanation saying 'sarve vidhayo vikalpyante, the archaic (Arṣa) language has been given very great freedom, and the grammarians got absolved from all limitations or it has been so stated on the line of Vedic grammatical rules because of in that language also there was no uniformity of affixes, suffixes and terminations as it was a conglomeration of various dialects and therefore the aphorism that 'chandasi bahulam', similarly the Ardhamāgadhi incorporated the linguistic features of more than a single dialect according to the dictate of Lord Mahāvīra to his disciples to teach his religion to the public of different regions in their own mother tongues and therefore it became full of distinct and various forms and hence characterised as 'bahulam'.
Inspite of this situation, could it have been possible to formulate an independent grammar incorporating the peculiar characteristics of the Ardhamāgadhī language? This is being considered here.
Peculiarities of the Arṣa mentioned.
In his vṛttion the sutras of the Prakrit grammar, Acārya Hemacandra has referred to the peculiarities of the Arṣa (Ardhamāgadhi) language 31 times at various places.' Of these, one pertains to the main peculiarity, viz., about the case termination e' of the Nominative Singular of the Masculine Nouns ending in 'a' Apart from this, he has referred to the case termination of the nouns twice. He has referred to once about the tense and once about the participle. All other statements mostly refer to phonetic changes.
On the basis of the examples quoted with regard to these peculiarities it becomes clear that Ardhamāgadhi was
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