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Māhārāștri Language and Literature
97
any thing more than the first eleven chapters as he knew no Sauraseni other than what he treated in the first nine chapters as thought by Mr. Ghosh, remains doubtful. If accepted as true, Mr. Ghosh's position leads to the conclusion that the first nine chapters of Vararuci treat of Saurasenī. Now, many of the rules in them are taken over and worked out by Hemacandra and others to compose their Prākrit grammars and are made to serve the purpose of Māhārāstrī, a fact which cannot be explained unless one supposes that Hemacandra regarded the Prākrit of Vararuci's grammar to be Māhārāstrī. And this tradition can be pushed back to the times of Rudrața. Mr. Ghosh”s argument that the Saurasenī rules are not addding anything new to the first nine chapters of Vararuci's grammar is also due to his neglecting many differences of a minute nature. The difference admitted by Hemacandra is also small and mostly of a restrictive nature. In fact Vararuci has more rules and shows many more differences than given by Hemacandra. Vararuci says that in vyāprta t becomes d while Hemacandra includes this change in the features of Māhārāstrīl. Vararuci notes that in words like grdhra r is changed to i which is put by Hemacandra in his treatment of Māhārāstrīl2. The Sauraseni peculiarity of the change of jñ to nn in sarvajña and ingitajña is a normal feature of Māhārāstrī according to Hemacandra3. The form accharia is also allowed in Māhārāstrī by him and he makes no provision for the peculiar verbal bases, kar sumara, pekkha and pulla in Saurasenī4. All this is sufficient to show that many of the peculiar forms of Saurasenī were included under Māhārāstrī by the time of Hemcandra. So one fails to see, if Hemacandra's rules are sufficient to make a difference between Māhārāstri and Saurasenī how Vararuci's many more are insufficient to do the same. By a careful comparison of Vararuci's Sauraseni rules and their inclusion under Māhārāstrī by Hemacandra it appears that the natural development in Prākrits appears to be a fusion of the dialectical differences due to their becoming more and more literary languages and not a greater differentiation to give rise to new languages as supposed by Mr. Ghosh.
Mr. Ghosh has pointed out that rule 2, 7 of Vararuci is a great obstacle in accepting his Saurasenī as different from Māhārāstrī. But as proved elsewhere this fact should lead us to suppose that the peculiar change of t to d is not a peculiarity of Saurasenī, but it is not legitimate to conclude that there is no difference between these two languages on account of that single fact. The explicit statement of Dandin cannot be explained away on any preconceived theory.
Mr. Ghosh has also tried to support his position from
the theory of