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A CONSTANT CONTINUOUS, AND LAUDABLE EFFORT
Excuse me being so late in expressing my views on your constant continuous and laudable effort to build up the earliest structure of Ardhamāgadhi as seen in the oldest books of the canon, particularly Ayaraṁga and Suyagaḍaṁga. I agree with you whole-heartedly and express my admiration at the labour you have taken to go into the statistical evidence for your conclusions.
You have confined yourself to the phonology of the language and you have included a few grammatical forms and a few rare words. You merit greatest praise for your work and the assumption that the oldest Ardhamägadhi retained the old Indo-Aryan stops like k, t and p as also, g, d, and b as does Pali in most cases. You will have also to consider the retention of nasal 'n' (dental) which is the only nasal in Pāli and it rarely uses 'n' (cerebral nasal). The clusters 'nn' and 'nn' are used without distinction and one may consider the dental cluster 'nn' as earlier than 'ņņ'.
BORI, (Pune) 24-10-96
मान्य भाई,
जिनागमों के क्षेत्र में आपका उल्लेखनीय योगदान है । इस पर हम सबको गर्व है और हम सब आपके प्रति गहन सामाजिक कृतज्ञता का अनुभव
करते हैं ।
इन्दौर ३-६-९४
-Prof. A. M. Ghatage
Jain Education International
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