________________
The readings with short i are also available in the foot-notes.
Besides these are orthographic problems in Jain texts. The use of ya-śruti, dental and cerebral n, the sporadic cases of voiceless changing into voiced, and so on. These problems will remain as long as the principles of editing Prakrit texts are not followed.
variations are such that it is difficult to follow any particular reading from the Mss. The copyists are not always learned, moreso, they may not have any knowledge or a very limited knowledge of the language and hence every possibility of making mistakes. The phonetics of the language is not always regular. Sometimes the copyists add something to the Mss. to improve upon the text. It is, therefore, not an easy task to edit a Prakrit text, as is normally the case with Sanskrit or with Pali.
3. Manuscripts vs Grammarians :
4. Emendation :
It is my personal feeling that some sorts of emendations are necessary to edit a Prakrit text--if the Mss. of a particular text do not help us much-recording, of course, the variants at the foot-note. (Cf. my edition of Kramadisvara's Prakrit Grammar, $ 26, pp 19-22).
5. Conclusion :
Having discussed some difficulties and anomalies of Prakrit texts, what remains now is a great task for the scholars to determine the principles we follow in editing a Prakrit text. The basic problem is whether the gram- marians or the manuscripts are to be followed. It is not easy to answer the ques. tion, particularly when most of the scholars think that any kind of linguistic phenomenon is possible in Prakrit. Perhaps under the tacit influence of this so-called ideas, some of the Prakrit forms have been incorporated in some editions which sometimes baffle and betray some of the basic notions of Prakrit language including dialects as enunciated by Prakrit grammarians. It is true that Prakrit grammarians are not very old, and most of the authors belong at a time when the language was almost stereotyped like Sanskrit. As a result the Prakrit features as embalmed and treasured up by the gram. marians vary from author to author, except a few general forms which are co- mmon to all. The texts of Prakrit manus- cripts are not always uniformly common; the
The above are some of the specimens taken at random to show the linguistic problems of Prakrit and Prakrit textual criticism. it is indeed very difficult to form direct cutand-dry principles for this purpose, unless we base our arguments on some priniciples by which grammarians are involved in the matter. In conclusion, I can just say that I have endeavoured to present a picture of editing Prakrit texts, and leave with the readers to judge its value or revalue of some Prakrit passages presented in this dissertation.
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