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आचाराङ्ग
परंपरागत प्राकृत व्याकरण की समीक्षा और अर्धमागधी, १९९५ (3. Paramparāgata Prāksta Vyākaraṇa ki Samikṣā aur Ardhamāgadhi, 1995)
Directions of Rehabilitating Ardhamāgadhi
Dr. Chandra has advanced in the book enough evidence to show that the original language of the Svetāmbara Āgamas has suffered numerous alterations under the impact of later influential literary Sauraseni especially literary Mahārāştri. Prakrit. Some glimpses of a number of original features of Ardhamāgadhi, we can get from a few earlier Canonical texts and from some preserved archaic variant readings. Chandra ends with a plea to accept those readings as genuine original features and revise the relevent text portions of edited Āgamic works on that basis.
One of the weighty implications of Chandra's finding is quite evidently the fact that they explode the contentions of those critics of the Ardhamāgadhi Canon according to whom the whole of the latter is unauthentic and secondary. Chandra's present investigations supplement and corroborate what other scholars and himself have found from the linguistic, formal, stylistic, and content-based features that are shared by the Asokan and Pāli on the one hand and Canonical Ardhamāgadhi on the other.
Dr. Chandra's work necessitates revising prevalent view about the original Ardhamāgadhi and invites fresh efforts to determine its real linguistic character.
-Dr. H. C. Bhayani
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