________________
76
Amrita
Pu. date 1573 A.D. for Uttara cases 3(?) with and 288 without the sounds.
Bu. date 1584 A.D. for Harivamsa, cases 28 with and 46 without the sounds.
S. younger than Bu. for Harivamsa, cases 71 with and 1 without the sounds.
From this list the interrelation of the dates of the Mss. and their tendency to keep the sounds of and r-groups becomes evident. The case of S. must be judged by the fact that it is itself a recent copy of an older Ms. of the Senagana. Moreover no very strict correspondence can be expected in such matters. But the conclusion should become apparent that these forms go back to the oldest period of the next tradition and cannot be attributed to later importation by the copyists. That the original text must have contained more forms than what we now possess is suggested by the fact that even the best and oldest of our Mss. do not give them in cases where others have preserved them. A direct proof of the tendency to remove such forms from the text is supplied by K. in which we find how a few forms of these sounds are changed into those without them.
More important for deciding the phonological nature of Apabhramsa is the fact that in spite of so large a number of such cases the range of the words in which they occur is much limited. The following are the words with the number of cases occurring in Mahāpurāņa distributed according to the Mss. where they are found. M. Ba. Pa. and Pu. may be left out of consideration, as they show either no cases or one or two of doubtful value. (1) Words with r-groups :
G. A. bu. S. anghriņi 1 ānāprāna 1 indriya
1 kriya 1
1 : dratti 1 dravakkiyau 1 draha 4 druma 1
K.