Old Bramhi Inscriptions In Udaygiri And Khandagiri

SR No.: 020516
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Benimadhab Barua
Publisher: University of Calcutta
Publication Year: 1929
Total Pages: 354
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 195

NOTES
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call it, in the third century B. C., in the Middle Country extending as far, say, as Kaušām bi and Mathură. It is apparent that the dialects of these Pillar Edicts are full of Māgadbisms. And if we go by the verdict of Vararuci, the predominant tendency of the Māgadhi dialects was Sauraseni, that is to say, of the dialect of the people of Mathurā.
Thus we are led to assume that the Udayagiri-Kbandagiri caves in Orissa, Mathura and Ujjeni-Girinagara were the three important centres of Jainism during the reign of Khāravela, and that the language of Kbāravela's inscription is, so far as its grammatical forms go, the same as the dialect of the Girnar version of Asoka's Rock Edicts, and, so far as its sound system goes, a combination of the Girnur and Mathura dialects.
The substitution of dha for tha cannot be said to be a peculiarity of the Pāli language on the ground that in Pāli, too, we have Madhurā as a spelling for Mathurā, just in the same way that we have in it Isigili as a spelling for Isigiri, and Makhādeva and Maghādeva as two spellings for Mahā. deva. All these were locally current proper names retained in Pāli, and meant to be put within inverted commas, that is to say, to be kept distinct from the standard Páli spellings. The spelling of the name MādhavaVideha as Māthava-Videgha occurring in the Satapatha-Brāhmana (I. 4. 1) is an apt parallel in Sanskrit literature. This spelling shows that the personal name Mādhava-Videha was locally pronounced, most probably by the inhabitants of Videha or Mithilā region, as Māthava-Videgha.
We mean to say that the spelling Madhurā was not due to a Pāli rendering of the sk. Mathurā,--that, in other words, Madhură was a janapada-nirutti or deši-nāma, that is to say, a locally current proper name, which found recognition in Pali. In accordance with a significant statement made by the Buddha in the Aranavibhanga-Sutta of the MajjhimaNikāya (Vol. III, Part III), one locally current proper name, if it signifies an object for which it is intended, is as good as the other, and there is no sound reason for regarding one of them as more correct than the other. The importance of his statement lies also in the fact that it contains a reasonable explanation for the recognition of a particular form of the proper name not from any intrinsic superior value of its own but on account
1. Vararuci's Prákyta-Prakāśa, XI.2 : Prakrtih Sauraseni.
2. See Actes du Sisieme Congres International des Orientalistes, Part III. p. 140, where Bhagawanlal Indraji remarks: "The whole inscription is in prose. Its language is Prakrit, different from the Lāt (Pillar) inscriptions of Asoka, but resembling the old Mahārāsýra Prakrit of the Western India cave inscriptions." This characterisation is too general to need comments.