Dictionary of Prakrit for Jain Literature Vol 01 Fasc 01

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

Page 23

(14)
loss of the final consonant in the original Skt. form. But both the endings and with a voiced dental, which though regular in Šauraseni, are unusual in Mābārāṣṭrī Bhāmaha's examples are art, at but no such forms are recorded in this Prakrit. No other grammarian meations them. Nor can we regard them as archaisms. It appears that these forms are due to some misunderstanding of the wording of this Sutra, either on the part of the earliest editor Cowell or possibly on the part of Bhamaha himself. Though Vararuci does not specifically mention the mechanism of stating grammatical rules, he generally follows the method followed by the Sanskrit grammarians which was accepted as a regular technique of the science of grammar. Whenever a single vowel is to be stated a is added to it, to fix its quantity and to make the use of its cases easy. Thus a: stands for the gen, sg, of which is equal to its explanation तस्य. In a series of terminations which begin with vowels this become essential In the above Sutra the suffixes enumerated are r,, and f and to combine them, a is added to the first two to give मात्, ओत् and following the usual Sandhi rules, the सूत्र reads : in the plural. Failing to understand this, some one wrongly analysed it into : and to justify it gave the examples in conformity with it as वच्छादो, वच्छादु This can hardly be the mistake of the commentator, when we find that 5. 22 and many others are correctly analysed by him. Oace Cowell included this in his edition, most of the later scholars have continued to repeat it to the present day. Let me add here that this problem is simplified for the sake of clarity.
The idea that all the stanzas spoken by those characters in the Sanskrit drama who use Śauraseni in their speech, are to be taken as composed in Maharastrī, is another case of misunderstanding. Bharata's statement that seven dialects were used in the dramas and in addition seven more sub-dialects were also used is substancially correct. This list does not include Maharaṣṭri, but his treatment of Prakrit in general is nothing but a brief summary of what the later grammarians give. The 17th chapter of the Natyaśāstra is repeatedly edited by scholars like Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Vaidya. In this sketch there is nothing which is new and all that is found in it is also included in the first 9 chapters of Vararuci, and the first 3 Pädas of Hemacandra, and therefore they naturally deal with the same language Whether it should be called by the generic term Prakrit or by the specific designation Maharaṣṭrī is really of no importance, and in the editions of the Prakṛtaprakāśa, with the commentaries In South India, this situation persists. More particularly
Bharata's statement in V. 13 weg: would suggest that the sound occurring in the Main Prakrit was a slightly different sound than the same phoneme in Sauraseni and Sanskrit. Phonetically it may be slightly fricativised and thus would approach a sound like a stage which immediately preceeded its complete loss.
In this context it is necessary to refer to the traditional allotment of the various Prakrit dialects and sub-dialects to the different dramatic characters. Bharata
gives a detailed statement about it in his chapter 17, stanzas 32-40, and the Daśarup and the Natyadarpana merely summarise them, as does also Viśvanatha in his Sahityadarpana. He, however, makes a slight addition to it with the words आसामेव तु गाथासु महाराष्ट्र (sic.) to which nothing corresponds in the other works. Both Pischel and Konow have given more importance to
this statement by taking the word gāthāsu in a wider
sense so as to include all kinds of stanzas in Prakrit
and making a sharp division between the prose in Sauraseni and verses in Mähäräṣṭri. In case of all other dialects like Magadhi, Sakari, Chandali etc. no such distinction is found, and the language remains the same whether in prose or verse. The oldest commentary on the Sahityadarpana written by a, the son of Visvanatha, explains prg here to mean fag which meaning the word Gatha has in the early literature. It is only later that Gatha comes to mean a specific Prakrit metre. We can then understand Viśvanatha to mean that only the songs, which occur in the speech of the ladies who speak Sauraseni, should be composed in Mähäräṣṭri. The practice of early Sanskrit dramas shows that a song to be sung by a female character was used at the appropriate occasion and Mähäräṣṭri was the most suitable Prakrit for it, because it was used for this purpose and owes its extreme attenuation
to it.
The subordinate role which Mähäräṣṭrī plays in Sanskrit drama can also by seen by ascertaining the amount of Prakrit stanzas in them. A quick check reveals that the number of stanzas in Prakrit in the early dramas was small. The three dramas of Bhasa प्रतिज्ञायौगन्धरायण, चारुदत्त and बालचरित show a total of 12 Prakrit stanzas and not a single one out of them is put in the mouth of a woman. In the dramas of Kalidasa, has 8 stanzas out of which 7 are spoken by women but only one of them, put in the mouth of the aft in the prologue, can be called a fa. In afafafaa there is a single stanza uttered by the heroine herself and in farafta, out of a total of 31, only 3 are put in the mouth of the ladies. Of the thres dramas of Harsa, a has 8 out of which 4 are