________________
AN EARLY EXAMPLE OF A LATE MIDDLE INDO-ARYAN POSTPOSITION?
With the death of Professor H. C. Bhayani, Ahmedabad will never be the same again for those foreign visitors who, like me, have in the past sought advice on Prakrit, Apabhramsa, the early forms of the new Indo-Aryan languages and everything connected with Gujarat and Gujarati. At all times an unfailing source of information, good humour and intellectual energy, he is simply irreplaceable.
PAUL DUNDAS*
As I produce this on computer screen, I have beside me some of Bhayani's clear and distinctive work notes, looking at which conjures up his benign presence once again. These notes were written one afternoon in the basement of the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology as a result of my having the previous day given Professor Bhayani the offprints of some articles of mine. He had not put these aside to be read at some later date, as so many of us do with offprints, but had engaged with them immediately. It transpired that an etymology I had suggested, while worthy, was nonetheless flawed, and he was determined to talk through the derivation and investigate alternative possibilities with me. (1) This, and other occasions like it, represented a tutorial freely offered by a master scholar and it was impossible not to benefit. In writing the following short note relating to an area in which Bhayani's expertise was unrivalled, I am acutely conscious of not having been able to seek his advice about the topic beforehand. But I console myself with imagining him in that heaven where all the great philologists abide, smiling faced and with pen poised, ready to produce a stream of examples and interpretations.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
