Agam 01 Ang 01 Acharanga Sutra

Author(s): K R Chandra, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Prakrit Jain Vidya Vikas Fund Ahmedabad

Page 14

A NEW DIRECTION IN JAINA CANONICAL
RESEARCH Since past several years Dr. K. R. Chandra has been examining and discussing the language and character of the preserved texts of the Svetāmbara Agamas, which are said in the earliest known Jain tradition, to have been in the Addhamăgaha Bhāsā. i.e. Ardhamāgadhi language. What were the characteristics of that Ardhamāgadhi ? The original language has undergone changes over centuries. How to arrive at or recover that original text ? How far does the information given about Ardhamāgadhi by traditional Prakrit grammars presents a real picture of the Āgamic Ardhamāgadhi ? These are the problems to which Dr. Chandra has addressed himself in his earlier writings. His present latest attempt aims at applying his resultant concept and principles of restoration to one small part of the Ardhamagadhi texts by way of a sample demonstration, viz. the first chapter of the first Amya. the Āyāramga, which scholars have accepted as the earliest among the Āgama texts.
Dr. Chandra goes about the task he has undertaken here in a quite systematic manner. First he presents a concordance of the orthographic variants sūtra-wise from the editions of the Mahavir Jain Vidyalay, Āgamodaya Samiti, Jain Vishvabharati, from Śilānka's commentary and from several earliest known Mss. of the 13th, 14th and 15th century. Next he has documented variation between writing the nasal consonant as dot or a homo-organic nasal, between n and ņ, between preservation, voicing or elision of an intervocalic stop (or the stop constituent of an aspirate stop).
Next follows the restored text of Āyāramga I on the basis of the available archaic' readings. In the fourth section is given statistical information about certain phonetic changes as seen in earlier and later forms. A complete alphabetical index of all the word-forms of the restored text is given. Finally, there has been presented in parallel columns the restored text along with the corresponding texts according to the known earlier editions.
Thus Dr. Chandra's present work succeeds, substantiated