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Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
have been a large one. Hence we can say with certainity that Udyotana too adhers to the same number of traditional importance. But the truc value of this dated author's list lies in its illustrating the colloquial format of the Sixteen Languages, the galaxy of specimens of which can rarely be found elsewhere.
405
Thus the number Eighteen which formerly denoted the Desi languages in the early literature of the Ardhamagadhi Canon, has been adhered to by the later Jaina authors in Prakrit, Sanskrit and Kannada. And this number it appears was keeping for long its hold on the Kannada people to such an extent that there has come down in the Kannada language an idiom known as Hadinentu Jatigalu, eighteen castes, possibly indicating thereby that at some juncture of the cultural history of Karnatak the importance of the numerical group of languages has been replaced by that of the same group of castes.
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