________________
(v)
also learning the language as I was writing this grammar. It was my own novel approach to the writing of grammar of that language which I had not studied as a part of my curriculum. I had not also studied it in the manner of German or French by doing exercises. This language had come to me without making me aware of it.
I used to come from the office in the evening, almost tired and exhausted. After a cup of tea, I took up the Apbh dohās of Hemacanda's grammar with the Sanskrit-chāyā of Pt. Saligrama Upadhyāya and parsed every word of the dohas. I do not know, in how many months it was completed. The whole material comprised nearly 5000-7000 sheets of paper. Then I made two groups of verbs and non-verbs. First of all, the non-verbs were arranged according to cases, the indeclinables forming a sub-group. Although I had only the Sanskrit cases in mind, I realised that much of the vast structure was demolished by this time, and the demolition was still going on. The Sanskrit-chāyā often compelled me to smile, realising that the poor descendant of the old royal dynasty still tried to be called by the kingly name for which he had lost all the rights. The construction like वृष्टिरभविष्यच्चेत्सुधान्यमभविष्यत् was forgotten long ago, but लज्जेज्जन्तु वयंसियहु जइ भग्गा घर एन्तु was rendered in chāyā by the conditional of Sanskrit. Really speaking, the writing of an Apbh grammar by a student of the vedic language looks like the writing of the history of a ruined empire. The Apbh language is very poor as regards the tenses and moods. Had it not been the legacy of the popular folk, it would have been also poor in participles.
The exploration of the texts supplied by Hemacanda by myself gave me more light than Hemacanda himself could give through his codified sutras. Although much of what belonged to the Sanskrit syntax came down to Apbh, the latter tended The to be more like the later vernacular than like its ancestor. spoken form of Apbh, which was as good as the early vernaculars, used to reflect in the Apbh poetry. While the poets would have been still writings fears af, they themselves would have been paraphrasing the same sentence as
