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अनुसंधान - १७ •50
is not a thorough list of all the usages but some examples are given here to form a tentative idea.
The above comparative list of usages clearly indicates that the editor has adopted Mahäräștri usages only in the edition of the Acaranga whereas he has given proper place to the archaic usages in the Isibhāsiyāim. Acārānga is the earliest canonical text and therefore how could it have younger usages (of Mahārāṣṭri) when there are archaic usages in the Isibhāsiyāim which is in no way a composition of earlier date than that of the Acārānga. While re-editing the first chapter of the Acaranga3 linguistically I had an opportunity to go through various Mss. of the text but there was no uniform elision of medial consonants as prescribed by the Prakrit grammarians.3 On this ground and considering the antiquity of the text as well as the liguistic form of the contemporary Pali language and additionally the form of the language of the Aśokan inscriptions of the East of the 3rd century B. C. did it not occur to Prof. Schubring that his edition of the Acărănga needs to be re-edited linguistically in the light of the linguistic form of the Isibhāsiyāim. I have no knowledge whether he has discussed this problem anywhere. If he has done so to clarify this odd situation I would like to have information about it from the indologists who are aware of it. Otherwise the language of the Acaranga edited by Prof. Schubring becomes unauthentic and unreliable and the same rule applies to his editions of other Jain Amg. texts.
Further I would like to draw the attention of the indologists that his predecessor Prof. H. Jacobi had also edited the Acārānga in 1882 A.D. but he has preserved all the medial (non-aspirate and aspitate) consonants wherever they were not found elided in the Mss. He did not make any attempt to standardize the language of the whole text either into Mahārāṣṭri or Ardhamāgadhi when the latter of these two is said to be akin to Päli in the Preface to his edition of the Acārānga The question is why did Prof. Schubring prefer to distort the original Amg. into Mahārāṣṭri Prakrit when the Jacobi's edition and the Mss. retaining the original medial consonants were before him. This situation
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