In Search of the Original Ardhamagadhi English Translation

Author(s): K R Chandra, N M Kansara, Nagin J Shah, Ramniklal M Shah
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 104

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL ARDHAMĀGADHI (3) The variant reading 'khittanna'was there in the Curņi
utilised for the M J V. edition.
In spite of this situation instead of adopting the reading 'khettanna' in its original archaic form) why should the readings ‘kheyanna' or 'kheyanna'be adopted, when both these forms belong to the later period from the viewpoint of linguistic evolution, first comes 'kheyanna' and later on kheyanna'.
In the Ācārānga (First Sruta-skandha), Schübring has uniformly adopted the only reading “kheyanna'through out, but the form 'kheyanna' is also found adopted in the JVB. edition; the form ‘kheyanna’is adopted in the Āgamo. edition; and all the three forms, viz., kheyanna, khetanna' and “khettanna', are found adopted in the MJV edition but 'kheyanna' is no where found. The equivalent of this word is kşetrajña'in Sanskrit which means 'ātmajña’or the Selfrealized one. But, later commentators have connected it with “khedajña' through conjecture and ignorance about the original form and sense of the word; and further they have endeavoured to explain it whimsically, deriving it from the latter conjectural word. In view of this latter derivation, the medial -de' is supposed to have been elided, and the residual-a-changed to‘-ya-' glide. This would be a change like the one in mātra → mātta → māta → māya, and pătra → pätta → pāta pāya similar to the development of atma + atta →āta → āya.
(1) It was, therefore, not necessary to replace-tr-' by -d'.
(2) In the archaic Prakrit language-tr' has changed to '-tt-' and not to '-t-' or '-y-'.
(3) In the Ashokan inscriptions of the Eastern region 'jñ' has been found to have been represented by 'nn' and not by 'nn'.
(4) Generally, the phonetic change of 'nn' to 'nñ appears to take place in the period subsequent to the Christian Era, and that too from the Southern and North-Western regions.
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