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'A SAINT LIKE THAT' AND 'A SAVIOUR' : 61
We have seen that the old correspondence tāyin = Pali tādi (n) = Sanskrit tädr (s) has also left its traces in the Ardhamāgadhi passages, which we consulted with regard to tãi. Already here we were allowed to witness a tendency to change the meaning of tâī understanding it in the sense of trāyī "Saviour". It is interesting to observe that the semantic development of tăi-tāyi(n) 9 moved in the same direction in both the Jaina and the Bauddha circles towards trāyi, due the to conditions which have been explained in this paper. The meaning of "Guardian or Saviour" was finally accepted by both the communities, because it also suited the general tendency towards divinization of the sacred terminology at a later period.
With regard to the semantic development of tai-tāyī towards trāyi, the principle laid down by Paul Thieme has to be kept in mind : "For one thing, a new meaning is not substituted in the way a new sound is, by a single act, so that the substitute appears in all contexts equally : "a new meaning" is really only our abstract formula for the fact that a word is used in certain contexts in which it was not used before and does not appear in others in which it did. New and old usage patterns may exist side by side for a long time.50".
To sum up our subject the following may be observed : In both the Communities of the Jaina and the Bauddha the sacred term tās on one side, tādi and tāyī on the other exist to which the meaning a saint like that' can be assigned. In this sense tãi can already be traced in the earlier layers of the Ardhamāgadhi Jaina Svetāmbara Siddhānta. In later times at about the 7th or 8th century A. D. the meaning of this term changed into 'Saviour, Protector' as an epithet of the Tathāgata as well as of Mahāvīra and other Tirthānkara. This became an established convention among both the Jaina and the Bauddha. The change of the meaning of tai into this particular
49 The reason for the fact, that the Jaina Commentators never set täi
=tādrk will be, that it was simply impossible for a later interpreter to see tādrk in tăi, after intervowel d had been dropped. Prakrit täi can only represent tāpī or tyāgā or trāyī or tāyi, but not tādsk. Skt. tādréis represented by Prakrit tārisa or rarer by tādisa only, vide Sheth's PSM. R. Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen, Strassburg
1900, $ 99 quotes täiņam = trāyinām too. 50 Paul Thieme, The Comparative Method for Reconstruction in Linguis
tics, in 'Language in Culture and Society' by Dell Hymes, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York, Evanston and London, p. 591 (right column).
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