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me and 1.6 mātaram piyaram. But I do not believe that it is safe to refer to this (as he did) as a 'retention of -t-: one is presumably less likely to find a -t- in a purely Prakrit form like bhāyā. With pariņņa, and with the same sort of effect in hiraņņeņam suvanneņam elsewhere (ZDMG 1880), his policy was to archaize with parinnā and suvanneņam.
I take the opportunity to congratulate you on your explanation of locative -ammi, which seems to solve one of the most perplexing problems of all. It goes well with the texts' failure to distinguish between 0- and u-, and with Bühler's suggestion that graphic confusion between n and ņ was involved : that would seem to justify Jacobi in his willingness to emend u-, !!-, and in (irrespective of the actual readings, as I understand him).
Schubring's identification of two groups within the Ācārārga MSS, and of separate strata of verse and prose material, seems to hint that critical editing is possible (though he did not make the attempt, and it would be a thankless task without access to facsimiles of the MSS).
With all good wishes, J. C. Wright
6, Huttles Green, Shepreth, Royston, Herts.
28/5/97 Dear Dr. Chandra,
Thank you for your letter of 15/5/97. I am delighted to hear that the Seminar on the subject of The Original Language of the Jain Canonical Texts was so successful.
I was interested to hear the outcome of your deliberations. I think that it is very likely that Ardha-māgadhi was the original language of the Jinagama or, since the language of the original Jinagama was presumably earlier than the Ardha-magadhi ile
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