Indian Antiquary Vol 43

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 25

FEBRUARY, 1914.] NOTES ON GRAMMAR OF THE OLD WESTERN RAJASTHANI
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NOTES ON THE GRAMMAR OF THE OLD WESTERN RAJASTHANI WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO APABHRAMCA AND
TO GUJARATI AND MARWARI. BY DR. L. P. TESSITORI, UDINE, ITALY.
Prefatory Remarks. When I first discovered some Old Western Rijasth'ni MSS. in the Indian collection in the Regia Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale at Florence three years ago, it occurred to me that an account of the new grammatical forms, which are met with in them, would prove very profitable to students of Neo-Indian philology. When, however, I took the task upon myself and began to study the MSS. and to grow familiar with the language, I saw I could give new explanations of many grammatical forms, the origin whereof had been missed or ignored hitherto, and therefore resolved to enlarge the original plan of the work into an historical grammar of the Old Western Rajasthan, and this I now lay before the public in the form of the present "Notes." The subject being extremely important for the history of the development of modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars from Apabhra ura, I hope that my labours will be well acceptable to all scholars interested in this branch of Indian philology. As regards imperfections, which will still for many years to come necessarily accompany every similar research into this field, I think there is a reason, for which l ought to be particularly excused in the present case. It is this: that, as far as I know, I am the first European who has ever dared to treat an important subject of Neo-Indian philology, without having been in India. I am, therefore, entirely cut off from that heip from natives, which is thought to be indispensable for any such work. That I have never been in India is no fault of mine, as it has always been my strongest desire to prosecute on the spot the study of the languages I love so well. It has simply been want of that opportunity, which I yet hope may some day come to me.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION The language, which I have termed "Old Western Rajasthani" and propose to describe in these pages, is the immediate offspring of the Caurasena Apabhraa, and the common parent of the modern dialects comprehended in the two general terms, Gujar ti and Mirw iri -Attention to this old form of language was first called by the late Mr. H.H, Dhruva, who in the year 1889 published an edition of the Mugdhivabodhamauklika--an elementary Sanskrit Grammar with explanations in Old Western R jasthin',-and in the year 1893 read a paper on "The Gujar ti Language of the Fourteenth-Fifteenth Century before the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists in London. He was, however, too careless in his work and too unaccustomed to philological accuracy to give his observations a reliable character and to make his labour profitable for inquirers into the origin of Neo-Indian verna. culars. In Vol. ix, Part ii of the Linguistic Survey of India, Sir George Grierson took up the subject again and gave a most clear account of the language used in the commentary of ihe Mugdhivabodhamsuktiks. This was as complete as it could be made on the comparatively scanty evidence of the grammatical forms occurring in it. He called the language " Old Gujarati," and explained it as the link connecting Gujarati with Apabhraca. The reason that I have adopted a different name for it is that, from the new materials which I have utilized in the present "Notes," it appears that at least until the fifteenth century there was practically only one form of language prevailing over the whole area now covered by Modern Gujarati and a great part, or possibly most of the area of Modern Mârwâți, and that this language was precisely that which is evidenced by the Mugdh vabodhamauktika. In other words, at the time above-mentioned Marw it had not yet detached itself from Gujarati, and hence the necessity of substituting for the one-sided term of Old Gujarati another in which Old Marw i could also be comprehended. • The term "Old Western RAjasthant," which seems to me a most convenient ono, was first suggested to me by Sir George Grieren