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that sometimes lack of editorial discipline and grammatical insight may be responsible for these divergent readings. Throughout his book Dr. Chandra has put forth a strong argument and a convincing plea for tracing the original readings of the text. He has neither discarded any readings, nor has accepted any one, but has presented all the readings before the scholarly world to apply their power of judgment to select any one for the original Amg. In some cases he has also suggested the older readings of the canonical texts. The present treatise will contribute a lot to the field of Prakrit textual criticism (for which see the article by S.R.Banerjee in 'Jain Journal', Vol. XXII, No.3, 1988, pp. 87-97). Dr Chandra has discussed at great length various readings of the Śvetāmbara Jaina canonical texts as edited by modern scholars. He points out quite clearly the diversity and disagreement of the readings which baffle all our attempts to find out the original character of the Amg. language. He has compared the different readings of the same word; e.g. in the Acarängasūtra-the readings cgadā vs cgatā, ṇassati vs nāsati, etaṁ vs eyam are found indiscriminately. In his opinion, there must be some forms which are earlier than the rest. Dr Chandra has also said that grammatically they are not wrong, but these readings puzzle the scholars to trace the original readings of the text. In the Acaranga-sutra as edited by Schubring, Agamodaya, Jain Vishva Bharati and MJV, different forms of the same word have been accepted, e.g., logāvāi (Schub.), loyāvādi (Agamo.), logāvāi (JVB) and logāvādi (MJV). It is to be remembered that the change of k into g in Amg. is, of course, very common in the Svetambara canonical texts, but they are limited to a group of words; and hence all the k's are not changed into g's and in that case there will be no existence of k at all in Amg. texts. Similar is the case with the elision of intervocalic d. The loss of intervocalic single consonantal sounds is a tricky problem in Prakrit, and Amg. in particular. No norm is established in this regard, except the prescription of the Prakrit grammarians. Editors of Prakrit texts fly into fancy in accepting or rejecting the readings accordingly. However, the points raised by Dr. Chandra is commendable.
In search of the original Amg. Dr. Chandra has raised seve
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