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A Comprehensive and Critical dictionary of Prākrit Languages (Introduction)
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at the end, even in the Devanāgarī form. 2. Transliteration, Derivation and Etymology
Transliteration into Roman is given after the Devanāgarī word into brackets so that those who are unacquainted with the Devanāgarī script can also make use of the dictionary. But in the same brackets are included some other words given only in transliteration. These are intended to explain the derivation and to some extent the etymology of the lemma. In the majority of the cases the etymology of the Prākrit word is to be found in a Sanskrit word. Only in rare cases we will have to search for origins in the pre-classical stages of language or even in the Indo-European stage. A brief indication of this will be given wherever necessary by quoting the relevant cognates. The derivation of the Prākrit words is a task beset with great difficulties. No attempt is made by the Prākrit grammarians to explain the derivation of the nouns, derivative verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc. as they occur in Prākrit, because they have laid down the rules of phonetic changes which relate a Sanskrit word with the word in Prākrit, sound for sound. A large number of words which in Sanskrit consist of two or more morphemes, which are based on the derivative history of the word, are all taken up as one unit and are used in Prākrit with the necessary phonetic changes. The Prākrit grammarians confine themselves only to such suffixes which are not found in Sanskrit. Hence the derivation of a Prākrit word can only be understood by looking into the corresponding Sanskrit word which is amenable to morphemic analysis, and this analysis is taken as the basis of the Prākrit word. To make such an attempt requires a good knowledge of the derivation of the Sanskrit word itself. Hence to make the process of derivation clear the transliteration of the Präkrit word and the transliterated form of the Sanskrit word which immediately follows are divided into their morphemic elements which are indicated by hyphens. This procedure works fairly well when the structure of the two words is nearly the same. But in many cases this is not so, because the way in which Prākrit uses its grammatical elements is not the same as is done by Sanskrit. In such cases two methods are used. One is to reconstruct the Sanskrit shape of the Prākrit morphemes sound by sound, and indicate their differences by using italics for the different elements. This often gives rise to a form which looks like Sanskrit only in its phonology, but not in its morphemic make up. The two languages may use different morphemes, or even if they use the same morphemes, their allomorphs will be differently distributed, and this must be made clear by using italics for either the
Şanskrit or Prākrit allomorphs. As this procedure gives rise to Sanskrit-looking · words which are not correct in Sanskrit, they are also given in their correct