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306
आचाराङ्ग
Biquifah, mich, wild, and I
Each word has been showr in the tables with its numerous variants as found in different printed editions of palm-leaf manuscripts and paper manuscripts. Seven tables have been displayed in this section. Section II contains the study of the variants from Ācārānga, Satraktānga, Rşibhāsitāni, Uttarādhyayana, Dasavaikālika Satra, Cornis and Samskrta commentaries.
It is a critical and comparative study of the variants based on the sound principles of linguistics. The variants as given above have been selected from the text of the Ācārārga Pt. I (MJV. edition, 1977) and compared with that of texual readings available in the various manuscripts (palm-leaf & paper manuscripts). After analysing the old Ardhamāgadhi forms of Saṁskṛta 7911 and 77911 the author concludes his findings as follows :
The study of variants of these two words reveals that with the passage of time and the evolutionary trend of the Prākşta younger and new forms like jahā and tahā became popular and they replaced the old forms like 37 and 71. The same is the case with other forms also.
That there is definitely a linguistic system working all through in the development of Ardhamāgadhi is strikingly revealed in the table No. 1 where the learned author has painstakingly shown numerous variants of यथा and तथा. The word यथा has variants जहा, TETT, 3761 and 37871 whercas the word 781 has TET, ETT, TĖ, mbi but never अहा or अधा or अहं.
By showing the direction towards the real Ardhamāgadhi form in the sacred Jaina canon and thereby satisfying our curiosity of knowing and going near to the scared and unpolluted language of the Lord Tirtharkara Prof. Chandra has done great service to the lovers of Prākta in general and the devotees of scared Jaina texts in particular. To solve the problem what he has posed is an uphill task and requires a team of scholars like him because one single scholar will not be able to complete the whole work.
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