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An Unassimilated Group in Apabhramsa
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groups either as a relic of an archaic stage of growth or remnants of a different dialect. But when Dr. Alsdorf published the Harivamsapurāna", a part of the Mahapurāna of Puspadanta, a writer of the 10th century and therefore decidedly older than Hemacandra, the problem assumed a new appearance. He pointed out that two of the three Mss. of that work do show the retention of r and groups of the type consonant+r, and he was able to collect some 11 words which have conjuncts of this nature and some 7 words showing the vowel r. Thereby he has naturally to reject the view of Jacobi that the retention of such conjunct can suggest an older stage of the language and his own conclusion amounts to the fact that Apabhramśa has kept an older phase of phonetic development, older than that of the Prākrits with respect to such groups.
With the publication of the whole of the Mahāpurana' in three volumes by Dr. Vaidya, it becomes again necessary to examine the problem anew in the light of all the material that can be collected from this work, which is the only major one which has kept traces of these unassimilated groups and the vowel ?. This will suppliment the collection made by Dr. Alsdorf and in part modify him, as the portion from which he has put together his 70 and odd cases, has been reedited with ampler material and which necessitates a revision of his cases, though to a slight extent.
As can be seen from the introductions of Dr. Vaidya to the different volumes of the work, the Ms. material for the whole work is not uniform. Because the problem of these sound changes depends greatly upon the way in which we may choose to handle the readings supplied by them, it will be necessary to note all the variants of the different Mss. as regards the preservation or removal of such sounds. I have been able to collect some 450 and more cases from the whole work, which show either the vowel r or r in conjuncts. I have also noted all the variants shown by the Mss. which either replace them with other vowels or change the groups by the process of assimilation and cases where the editor did not feel himself justified in adopting these sounds in the body of the text as the Mss. evidence was slender, being confined to one or two of inferior value. It is just possible that a few cases may have escaped my notice, but the collection is ample enough to evaluate it for linguistic purpose and a few more cases, if detected, are not likely to change materially our general conclusions based on the available material. It will not be out of place to point out that the editorial work has been so thorough and well done that the reader is never at a loss to make