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INTRODUCTION
97
ponderance of the vowel u together with predominance of Skt on this dialect made it distinct from other Vi. bhāṣās and made it popular among the South Indians.
As will be seen from the foregoing discussion, we have a clear-cut division of Vibhāşās falling under two categories. The first category constitutes dialects which are degradations of Mg to a greater degree while the second consists of ļākki alone which is a degradation of Skt and S with Ap domination. We shall see further on that Țākkī was a kind of Ap dialect or was almost akin to Ap.
V Vibhāņā as a Division of Prākrit and its
Difference from Apabbramśa. 40. The meaning of the word Vibhāşā bas been a much disputed point among scholars.86 GRIERSon in his article, I to IV The Prakrit Vibhāṣās has discussed the implication of this word from various aspects. He based his article mostly on PS and Rt's PK. Pu's work was not avilable to him by then. Now since we have excellent editions of both Pu's and Rt's grammars with us, we can enlighten further on Vibhāṣā. GRIERSON's observations can be resolved into following points :(i) Vibhāṣā is a form of Pkt in which the rules of
the standard or of some other dielect are
applied or not at option. (ii) Vibhāṣā may mean a base language ( vi-bhāṣā ) (iii) It may also mean a minor bhāşā (vi-bhāṣā).
(iv) Vibhāşā is a corruption either downgrade or upgrade of one or more standard Pkt dialects, which is
85 Fr G. V. TAGARE means an uncultured dialect by the term Vibhāşā used in N$ XVII 48 and identifies it with Ap. See HGA, p. 7
Pra. F
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