________________
MAY, 1915]
A NOTE ON GUJARATI PRONUNCIATION
109
capacities, advocated and adopted to some extent the phonetic system of spelling. This brief review of the history of this agitation and its result in the practical writing of the day, will show that it is incorrect to say that the h- sound is dropped in writing; it does not accord with the exact state of things in Gujarâtî literature. Sir G. Grierson's statement to this effect was naturally influenced by the authorities to which alone he had access; these obviously ignored the existing phase in the history of Gujarâti spelling, and perhaps minimized its value and significance.
I must now touch two out of the several important linguistic features dealt with by Dr. Tessitori. The first is the postposition rahal () which he notices as one of the characteristics of the Mârwarî tendency in later Old Western Râjasthânî. The use of this dative post position to express the sense of the genitive is regarded by the learned doctor as a Mârwârî tendency. I am not in a position to call into question the correctness of this view. But I shall place one particular fact regarding this postposition and its genitive use, which is likely to influence him in coming to a definite conclusion. The Mugdhavabodha-Auktikas, no doubt, is free in its use of this rahat in a genitive as well as dative sense. But there is another set of works which I have come across and in which this postposition is used in the genitive sense with equal liberality. I allude to certain Parsi religious and other works translated into Sanskrit by Mobed Neriosang Dhaval, who is believed to have flourished in the 12th or 13th century of the Christian Era. These Sanskrit translations have been further rendered into Gujarâtî (i. e. the language of the period prevailing in Gujarât) by cther Mobeds later on some time about the 14th or the first half of the 15th century A. D., as I conclude from the nature of the language. It is in these old Gujarâtî translations that the postposition is found used with great frequency, 10 A few instances will be not without interest :
(1) घातक दुराचारी रहिं घात कर उत्तमरहिं उत्तम विभूति
9 I may be permitted to point out incidentally that the name of the work is Auktika and not Mauktika. Sir George Grierson has repeatedly called it Mauktika. (Vide pp. 353 and 359 of his Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. IX, Part II). Dr. Fleet in an editorial foot-note at the opening page of my review of that work, (vide Ante. February 1892, p. 52), has deliberately come to the conolusion that the name is Mauktika and not Auktika, on the basis of the evidence given by him which, as a matter of fact, leads to an opposite conclusion. This mistake seems to have arisen out of the fact that the whole name मुग्धावबोधमौक्तिकम् can be separated in two ways मुग्धावबोधम् + औक्तिकम् _and_मुग्धावबोध+मौक्तिकम्, and also out of the fact that H. H. Dhruva called this edition of the work, of a series contemplated by him. But it is clear that the true name is औक्तिकम्, 1st because मौक्तिकं as appended in this name makes no proper sense, 2ndly because औक्तिकं has a reference to the expression उक्तीनां - (आम्नाय ) संग्रह in the opening verse of the work, and 3rdly and mainly because in the concluding colophon the author himself distinctly calls it औक्तिकम् :
औक्तिकं व्यधित मुग्धकृते श्रीदेषचन्दरगुरुकमरेषु ॥
Auktika was evidently a common designation for treatises of this kind. There is one such, called Vakyaprakasa Auktika written in V. S. 1507; its opening verse says:
देवदेवं नमस्कृत्य जिनं त्रिजगदीश्वरम् । संक्षेपादौक्तिकं वक्ष्ये बालानां हितबुद्धये ||
(This work is listed in Prof. Bühler's Catalogue at No. iii 18, also in Dr. Aufrecht's Catalogus Catalogorum). 10 These works have been published under the patronage of the Parsi Panchayat of Bombay under the able and learned editorship of Ervad Sheriarji Bharucha.
