Indian Antiquary Vol 47

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

Page 242

226
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
SEPTEMBER, 1918
my note given some reasons which, I believe, conclusively dismiss Mr. Divatia's explanation, but he has not been persuaded by them and in his new article on the subject still clings to his theory and not only maintains that è, ò are derived from aya, ava, but also that the result of the contraction of ai, ai, if this contraction ever takes place, is not e, è, but é, ó.
Naturally, in the beginning of his new article Mr. Divatia examines the arguments given by me against his theory and tries to dismiss them, but how ! Instead of removing them from his path, he simply walks round them and gets beyond. One of my arguments is that there are no sure instances of any ai, au of the 0. W. Rajasthani having changed to aya, ava in any stage of this language. To prove the contrary, my opponent splits the vocal compounds aï, aü into their two elements and fetches instances of isolated i, u having passed into ya, va in the later stage of the 0. W. Rajasthani if not in Gujarati itself! The only instances of the pretended change ai > aya which Mr. Divatia is able to quote, are vayara, payasdra, bayathaü, and payathai. I had already explained these forms as incorrect readings due to the habit of the scribes to write ya for i. But Mr. Divatia does not accept this explanation and ransacks some O.W. Rajasthani texts in search of examples like niscal. uvajhái, Ramaira, etc., which in his opinion prove that the scribes instead of showing a tendency to write ya for i, show a tendency to write i for ya. But i is the regular spelling in all these cases and does not represent a tendency of the scribes, but a tendency of the language! The fact is that the tendency of the scribes to write ya for i is not only indisputable but also much more widely established than Mr. Divatia imagines, for it is found in Prakrit manuscripts as well. To cite only one case. Of the two manuscripts collated by Prof. H. Jacobi for the edition of his Mâhârásiri Erzählungen, A and B, the former reads gayam for gaïm (p. 73) and payasário for païsário (p. 63), and the latter kayavaya for kaïvaya (p. 61) and vayara for vaira (p. 60).
Another of my arguments was that it is not admissible that a language which possesses a tendency to samprasarana even greater than Apabhramsa itself, should at the same time possess a tendency to anti-samprasarana, to use Mr. Divatia's expression. In other words, it is not admissible that the 0. W. Rajasthani after changing kavaņa into kaina should have reversed the process and changed ka üna into kavana back again. Mr. Divatia clings to this example and discovers that Apabhramsa kavana is derived from Prakrit kaüņa <ko-una
<Skt. kah punah (!), and that the 0. W. Rajasthani form kaina itself is only a return to the old Prakrit form! This is of course all in perfect accordance with Mr. Divatia's principle
6 Also vayaragi, ovidently a tutsama in part modelled on vayara.
7 Thege examples probably show that the O. W. Rajasthani scribes who wrote vayara and payasdra were not thereby introducing a change in the regular spelling, but only perpetuating an inaccuracy which had become traditional. From the grammatical point of view these forms with aya are no less foreign to the O. W. Rajasthani than they are to the Maharaştri, and if they do not represent an actual change in the case of the latter, much less can they represent an actual change in the case of the former, They are ovidently anomalous spellings which for reasons difficult to detect were more frequently used in the case of sorne particular words than in the case of others. Had it been the case of an actual change these spellings would apply to all words alike. Mr. Divatis has not ignored this objection, but being unable to remove it, he has contrived to discredit it by admitting the possibility of the impossible. According to him it is quite natural that aya should be found "only in certain words," for "changes in a language cannot proceed on regular lines of uniform march; some forms will linger, some progress, go backwards and forwards, till a final settled state is reached." Thus vayara, payasdra and the like are only instances of words which felt the change that was beginning to come, in advance of the others. Needless to say, this theory of precocious and tardy words and of pendulum-like oscillations backwards and forwards is new and would require to be proved.