Collected Articles Of LA Schwarzschild On Indo Aryan 1953 1979

Author(s): Royce Wiles
Publisher: Australian National University

Page 86

98
A STUDY OF SOME FEATURES OF THE IMPERATIVE IN MIDDLE INDO-ARYAN
REMARQUES SUR QUELQUES CONJONCTIONS
DU MOYEN INDO-ARYEN
L. A. SCHWARZSCHILD
stem. This aloofness of Ardhamagadhi from the other Middle Indo-Aryan dialects is evident from many features of the verbal system, c.g. the infinitives in itae.
But Ardhamagadhi did not stand altogether outside the general stream of linguistic development; it exercised a profound literary influence on the non-canonical writings of the Jains, which accounts for instance for the use of some di forms in Jain Maharastri. Ardhamagadhi was a language of the east central area that had gained early literary eminence. As such it had many points of resemblance with the language which was spoken in the west central area and which was later moulded into the literary language Digambara or Southern Apabhrama. Some of these points of resemblance extend even further into the western region and into Western Apabhramia. This applies to the ending-dhi of Ardhamagadhi, which appears in Apabhramla as-ahi, the most frequent termination of the second person singular imperative. The analogical extension of the long vowel in Ardhamagadhi does not appear to have affected the area where Apabhrama was formed, and -ahi is found only with roots ending in d, c.8. dhi. The use of the short form -ahi had been foreshadowed already by isolated examples in earlier Middle Indo-Aryan, as in ni jinshi (quoted above from the Bhag. Aradh.). Other Apabhrama endings of the second person are -, based on the bare thematic stem, and also e. I borrowed from the optative, as well as probably from the second person plural. The su forms have almost completely disappeared in Western Apabhramsa, but they still existed in Southern Apabhrama.
The Apabhramla forms are clear antecedents of the modern imperative, where particularly the bare stem is represented in Hindi, Panjabi, Marathi, Bengali, etc.), as well as the bare stem with a final - (Sindhi), and there are also remnants of the imperative ending -ahl, particularly in the older forms of the modern languages (e.g. Old Hindi, Old Awadhi). The imperative ending - has left an interesting survival in Old Awadhi: this is an instance of the resemblance that has been noted between Eastern Hindi and Southern Apabhramsa. Already in the Uktivyaktiprakarana, attributed to the twelfth century, there occur future imperatives of the type n anesu, padhes, which are still found in 16th-century Awadhi, for instance in the works of Jayasi and Tulsi Das (e.g. kahes "you shall say). There is also in Old Awadhi a second person plural of the future imperative in-chu. Attempts have been made to explain the endings and chu by means of the Middle Indo-Aryan causative . The meaning of the future imperative is, however, distinctly associated with the future rather than the present tense, and it would therefore seem probable that the Southern Apabhramia type of future in esami, -esahl, etc., was responsible for the use of the characteristic vowele. To this were added the personal endings of the imperative - second person singular) and -u (second person plural) to form a future imperative
The development of the second person singular endings of the imperative can only give a glimpse of the changing pattern of regional distribution that is so characteristic of the development of the verbal system in Middle Indo-Aryan.
S'il est vrai que le style périodique et l'usage des propositions subordonnées appartiennent surtout aux langues cultivées et raffinées, et que la paralaxe est du ressort des langues dites & primitives, on s'attendrait à un essor remarquable de la subordination en sanskrit classique. Mais il n'en est rien. Le sanskrit, si apte à exprimer les pensées les plus complexes et les plus enchevêtrees, se sert surtout de la composition nominale et des constructions absolutives, et néglige les phrases subordonnées. L'usage - toujours assez restreint qu'on fait de la subordination en sanskrit dépend de l'époque et surtout du genre littéraire ; le style des brdhmana et des bhäsya se signale par les propositions liées sous forme corre lative!. L. Renou a montre que les parties descriptives du kuya évitent tout à fait la subordination, tandis que le style oratoire, qui pourrait bien se rattacher au style bhästja, se sert parfois de phrases relatives, même compliquées. Les textes prakrits qui nous sont parvenus ne sont souvent qu'un reflet du sanskrit, mais dans quelques textes moins stéréotypes on entrevoit une souplesse et une richesse d'expession toutes nouvelles, et ce sont quelques-unes de ces innovations qu'on voudrait examiner ici.
Nombre de textes prakrits, y compris les vers maharastris du drame, les parties descriptives du canon jaina, aussi bien que les passages descriptifs du känya apabhramsa, se laissent traduire presque mot pour mot en sanskrit. L'influence du style descriptif du sanskrit a prédominé au point que la syntaxe et la tournure des phrases sont restées assez proches du sanskrit, malgré tous les
1. AMINARD, La subordination dans la pro vedie Elode sur le Salapatha Brahmana, 1) Arnoles der Universite de Lyon, 3. Paris 1936.
2. L. RENOU, Sur la structure du klivs J.A1950, s. 1, p. 11.
For examples of this in the development of the future system, se JRAS, 1953, pp. 50-52. B Saksend, The Evolution of
Allahabad, 1937), pp. 269-270.