Distribution Of Variant Endings U Au And A In Apabhramsa Verses In Hemacandras Prakrit Grammar

SR No.: 269457
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Herman Tiken
Publisher: Herman Tiken
Total Pages: 31
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 3 MB

Page 23

VARIANT ENDINGS -U, -AÜ AND -A IN THE APABHRAMŚA VERSES
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in Apabhramsa is concerned, there need not have been an historical connection between the two endings at all: the appearance in a literary dialect of a new form beside or instead of an older one is mostly the result either of an internal process, such as analogy, contamination or fabrication, or of borrowing from an external source. It is thus a matter of substitution or replacement of the one ending by the other, rather than of the one having developed from the other. Consequently the question of the derivation of the ending -ā once more appears to be completely open. If -ā were to be explained as the result of an analogical extension, the other so-called long endings of the nominal inflection must be ruled out as a starting point, as they would have been derived from extended endings themselves (-1 < -iya and plur. -ā < -aya). In fact, instances showing a development of the type of -aü > -ā seem to be restricted to the endings of the nominal inflection. As far as the possibility of borrowing is concerned, the fact that in Apabhramsa the ending -ā has replaced -aü need not automatically reflect the historical development of the particular spoken language from which it had been borrowed. For instance, in Avadhi the long ending -ā is found in opposition to -a (see note 56), in which case it may actually be the result of a lengthening process rather than the result of the contraction of -aü.60 In fact, one would be tempted to assume the same process of lengthening in the case of the long endings of Apabhramsa -ī (< -1), -ā (plur. < -a), and -061 (< -u),62 were it not for the occurrences of the disyllabic endings, which at least in the case of -aü precede those of the long ending.
In this connection I would like to raise an admittedly no less speculative question concerning the origin in Apabhramsa of the disyllabic endings. Above, I have already referred to their intermediate position, in the sense that, while making use of inherited material (suffix -ka), they anticipate the long endings in creating an opposition between head noun and adjective or predicate. As far as Apabhramsa is concerned, in the case of -aü the extension of the adjective and participle with -ka must have preceded the 'shorthening' of the endings -0 (masc.) and -4m (ntr.) to -u as it would be difficult to explain the origin of bhagga-ü from bhaggu.63 *bhagna-ka is indeed actually found in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS), in which the use of the suffix -ka as found in, for instance, bahuvrīhi-compounds in Skt has been greatly extended to include such word categories as adjectives, gerundives, and past and present participles. 64 It is significant that this distribution of -ka in BHS closely resembles the one met with subsequently and in a much more systematic way in Apabhramsa. It may well be that we have to do here with an instance of the influence of the spoken