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फेब्रुअरी २०११
१७९
*vasanta-vāra CDIAL 11441, springtime and *hayanavāra CDIAL 13978, winter as etymons of two Kati words;
Skt. tithi-vāra attested for example in Weber No. 261 (manuscript colophon), CDIAL 5811 *tithivāra "a festival", cf., for instance, Hindi tyohar and Guj. tehevār.
Ski., karmavāți can easily join this group if we assume that it is a wrong or hyper-Sanskritisation. The second element is not Skt. vāti but a Sanskritisation of a Middle-Indian or vernacular form in-vāri. The feminine form -vāri instead of -vāra, also shown in some of the terms mentioned above, can easily be justified because of the implied or explicit association of such terms with the feminine noun tithi. This solution seems more satisfactory than taking -vați in k. with its face value "enclosure", as the traditional explanation does, for it would be the only example where vāți has a metaphorical meaning for which no support is found anywhere, not even in modern languages (see CDIAL 11480). On the semantic level, the boundary between vați "enclosure" and "vāra "the time fixed or appointed for anything", hence "day" or "time division" can be felt as rather thin, which makes the word at least superficially understandable without too much difficulty. (b) karma- with time divisions
The list of divisions of time in increasing order found in Hemacandra's Abhidhānacintāmaṇi is neither the only one of its kind nor the earliest. The convenient synoptic table established by W. Kirfel shows that the designations correspond to those found in the Amarakosa and in the Markandeyapurāṇa. For the smaller units, in particular, Hemacandra uses nimeṣa and kāṣṭhā, like the former, and not avali, ucchvāsa, stoka, etc., which are typical of Jaina sources.20
20. W. Kirfel. Die Kosmographie der Inder, Bonn-Leipzig, 1920, p. 334 and 337-338. Another convenient table of the divisions of time in the Jaina tradition is found in Jainendra Siddhanta Kosa vol. 2 p. 216 (under
