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

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REVIEWS AND OPINIONS ON ACARANGA
Co-editor of the Dictionary of the Prakrit Proper Names (Ahmedabad, 1977), Mr.K.R.Chandra is known for his longtime interest in Middle-Indian Languages and in Jain traditions. At L.D.Institute of Indology of Ahmedabad, and at the Gujarat University where he has worked for a long time, he was able to closely follow the research and the thinking which led to the discovery and the collation of the ancient manuscripts on the palm-leaves of the canonical texts and of their comments, and then at the publication, by the Mahavira Jain Vidyalaya (MJV) of the Jain Agama Series, Bombay, 1968 and the following.
The difficulties, the codicological particularities and the linguistics were properly studied by the editors (Muni Punyavijaya at the head) who worked on it in the introduction of the first volume of the collection : they bring out the ceremonial criticism, very heavy, very polished, of which the new editions are well-stocked (equipped). But in the light of the entire lot of the documents thus made accessible gradually, K.R.Chandra judges that a lot of progress in the knowledge of the old Canonical language (authentic) can be accomplished, provided that first of all take into account methodically, systematically, all the lessons, that transmit the most ancient sources, to proceede in comparison to which the treatises prepare themselves.
It is with what they use in the present study, which will render to the making of the three publications of the same series; Prācīn Ardhamāgdhi Ki Khoj Mem(on the traces of the old Ardhamāgdhī), Ahmedabad, Vidya Vikas Fund 8, 1991, 110p, Restoration of the Original Language of Ardha. māgadhi Texts, Ahmedabad, 1994, (Prakrit Jain Vidya Vikas Fund), 93 p. and Paramparāgat Prakrit Vyakaran ki Samiksā aur Ardhamāgadhi, Ahmedabad, 1995.
In short, as clarified in the introduction (chap.1) it is proposed here, after a very thorough study, to make an inventory of the most ancient attested forms in the 5 most ancient canonical treatises and every time that it finds itself
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