________________
KUVALAYAMALA
sation in Jaina Mss. Hemacandra's rule is more rigorous: ja-sruti can stand with a or ā and when preceded by a or a. The Ms. P uses ja-sruti more regularly, but J rather sparingly. In this edition ya-sruti is uniformly used with the constituent vowel a or a, irrespective of the preceding vowel. All the readings, in this respect, from both the Mss. are recorded in the first forme and in the context of the Paiśācī dialect; but elsewhere only some significant readings are noted.
16
When the Mss. P and J waver between e or i and o or u' I have written S and with a consonant and elsewhere and . But if both the Mss. write e and o and if they are metrically short, a curve is put on them to indicate their short metrical value. Very often P writes -ya for -e2 as the termination of the Inst. sing. of the Fem. type. In J it is very difficult to distinguish between u and o, and it is interpreted in the light of the reading of P. But much uncertainty remains especially in Apabhramśa passages which are scattered all over the text in the midst of other Prakrit passages. Whenever the author passes from one dialect to the other, there results a good deal of uncertainty of readings. About the elision (more regular in Māhārāṣṭrī) of intervocalic consonants like k, g, c, j, t and d, or of softening k, t and th or of retaining g, d, dh and bh; and of changing th, dh and bh to h-there is a large number of variants between the two Mss. As a rule, the reading of J is adopted, noting duly that of P in almost all cases. The Ms. J makes no distinction between v and b; but, in this edition, it is spelt in the light of its Sanskrit counterpart current in Western India.
Both the Mss. use anusvāra almost as a rule, but there are some instances of parasavarna here and there: in this edition only anusvāra is used. In terminations where anusvāra is optionally used J is followed; but, if both the Mss. use anusvāra and the accompanying vowel is metrically short, the sign of nasalisation or the candrabindu is used instead. The locative singular termination is necessarily written as mmi and not mmi. J often writes kinna, but here it is written kim na. In the Sanskrit passages, however, parasavarna is used; and the consonant, in the conjunct group with r as the first number, is written single (i.e., varga, and not vargga) irrespective of the spelling in the Mss.
Grammatical standard of Hemacandra is always kept in view, but nowwhere is it forced against the readings agreed upon by both the Mss.
Once it was realized that it is highly probable that the revisionist is the author himself in most of the cases, it was felt that the readings from both
221-24, Bangalore 1956. He observes thus: 'The epigraph may be palaeographically assigned to a date about the close of the First Century B.C.' The language of the inscription is Prakrit. Interesting from the orthographical point of view is the ya-śruti in the names Payavati for Prajavati and Bharadayi for Bharadvāji. But there is no case in which a surd has been modified into a sonant.'
1 As a corollary of the rule that a long vowel before a conjunct is necessarily shortened, it is found that often e and o become i and u before a conjunct. In the absence of orthographic symbols in Devanagari for ĕ and o, which being their phonetic value before a conjunct, i and u (respectively) are used instead. Panini (I. 1. 48) has recognised the symbols i and u for ĕ and o.'-Vide my intro. to the Kärttikeyanuprekṣā, p. 73, Bombay 1960.
2 This may be even a with the glide y.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org