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REMARKS ON THE TEXTS
go to stamp the language of our hymn as true to type. So does the word alajaya (st. 20), if taken as a loanword from Arabic-Persian, equivalent' to Modern Gujarati alijahām, meaning "august", and being here an attribute of the Jina.2
Tadbhava-like, hybrid formations, such as paḍiyau, caḍiyau sāhaga, moaga, jagi, jaga-jantu, vaņa-rāji, kammāņi, samsiddhae, upayāra, jāgaramanā, haratāra, along with genuine Prakrit forms such as mentioned above, as well as Sanskritisms, like mama, karavāņi (for karavāni, First Person sg. Imp.), dehi, gamī, obviously represent attempts of the poet to express himself in archaic style, in order to enhance the dignity and solemnness of his eulogy. Nominal and verbal forms in -o and -e (for -i and -u) may also fall under this category of phenomena, though, on the other hand, they may also be recent development, representing cases of "contracted svara-yugma", so typical of Middle and Modern Gujarati.
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The language of the interlinear commentary ("Tabba") is far more developed, and can be defined as Modern Gujarati of rather an early type, to judge from formations like en parim, dihaḍau (Modern Gujarati dahaḍo), mū and muhanai (Modern Gujarati mane), atibhāgu (modern atibhāṁgyo), lāgaü (modern lāgyo), lādhi (modern lādhī), huṁ gāyasuṁ (modern hum gāïś); huṁ joyusu (modern hum joïś).
Out of the 21 stanzas of the present hymn, the first 20 are in a metre of twenty mātrās in each of its
(1) Kesavarima, p. 232.
(2) The commentator takes the word as an equivalent of Prakrit alajja, "shameless", and connects it as an apposation with majha, "me" (Dat. sg.), which however does not seem satisfactory.
(3) Kesavarima, p. 265 and 278, Divatia II, p. 69 ff.
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