Comprehensive Critical Dictionary of Prakrit Languages Volum 01

Author(s): A M Ghatage
Publisher: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

Page 10

To nis text he has added a Sanskrit commentary a quotation from Vācaspatya. Its use in Prakrit is explaining the meanings of these words and illustrates unknown. It quotes long passages from Prakrit works their use in a large number of stanzas composed by along with the Sanskrit commentary on them when avai. bimselt. Puschel is very critical about these as having lable and even whole chapters are included in this respect. no literary merit, even after giving due consideration to This procedure accounts for its bulk. It is more of the constraints under which they were composed. In the nature of an encyclopaedia and includes both spite of this limitation they are often of use in deciding Prakrit and Sanskrit material, which the author considers the me nings of words when they are polysemous in as useful for studying the Jain canonical works and Sanskrit itself and hence they are often cited for this their commentaries. It is obviously modelled on Sanskrit purpose in the dictionary.
works like the 567 and the apety and as such
has both the merits and short-comings of these works. Hemacandra makes two more points worth noting.
In spite of its obvious defects, the work has been He explicitly says that he has not included in his work
carefully scanned to get some items and meanings pumerous words current in different parts of the country
which are not otherwise available. The material utilised on the grand that they are too many to be listed. He
is mostly based on the memory of the author and the has confined himself to such words as are actually found
MSS. used were not critically edited. Its bulk has used in Prakrit literature. He also defines what he means
certainly affected the judgements of both F. W. Thomas by Desi qualitatively in his stanza 3. There he leys down the criteria that they should not be justifiable by
and W. Schubring when they speak of this work in
their reviews of 1924 and 1935. The strictures passed the rules of grammar, or not known to San krit lexicons
on it by Pt. Hargovind Das Seth in the preface of and not justifiable by interpreting their sense by the
his Dictionary in 1928 appear to be not fully justified, device of a figurative or transferred meaning. More
as claimed there that the name of a work of Yasovijaya particularly words derived from the sccalled 22575
952742912a in Prakrit is coined by the author. are also excluded. He thus makes a distinction between Desī words not derived from Sanskrit words and The author has used about a hundred books in Dhâtvädeśas which are not genetically connected with Prakrit and Sanskrit and has also listed the words Sanskrit roots, a distinction which is reflected in he under which the bulk of the information is to be found further history of such words in tbe modern Indian in the introduction. But their number is very small. languages.
The introduction also includes the whole of the Prakrit All the modern Dictionaries of Prakrits are arranged grammar of Hemacandra with a new commentary In on the alphabetical principle, but the way in which the Sanskrit verses written by the author, which however alphabet is arranged differs from dictionary to dictionary. gives no new information. Particularly in the treatment of the Anusvära no definite
During the thirties of this century two more principle is followed and hence groups of words involving this sound are found at different places in these
dictionaries of Prakrit were publisbed. Unlike the
work mentioned above, they were planned as regular dictionaries. Nor is the principle followed by a particular
dictionaries of the modern type, arranged alphabetically dictionary used consistently throughout and hence
and the meanings of the words explained with a few the Anusvara, if it occurs in the middle of a word, is
examples. The various meanings which the words not given the same treatment as is given to it, it it
conveyed are systematically numbered and separated occurs in the first syllablo of a word.
from each other. The usual parts of speech aro The largest modern dictionary which professes to indicated and the verbal bases are clearly marked. The deal with Prakrits is called Abhidänarājendra, composed words are collected from the literature and they aro given by Vijayarā jendrasuri (1825-1906), edited by his two with their Sanskrit equivalents based on the rules of pupils Dipavijaya and Yatindr vijaya and published changes of sounds which the Prakrit grammariang havo between 1910 and 1924, in seven folio volumes and formulated. Of these two, the Ardha-Māgadhi dictionary contains more than 9000 pages of a large size in two was planned to include all the words in the Jain columns. The lemmata are given in Prakrit, but that Svetämbara canon or sacred books, overlooking the does not mean that all such words actually occur in legitimacy of the books called Prakirņakas. All the 45 the Prakrit literature. For example the entry on books, which form the capon, were utilised. Howevor, page 3 is based on its Sanskrit counterpart afata and in spite of the fact that Ardba-Magadhi as a Prakrit its meaning as current in the Mimāmsa is given with is confined to the canonical works only, some other