Introduction to Ardhamagadhi

Author(s): A M Ghatage
Publisher: School & College Book Stall

Page 16

S. 3.]
LANGUAGE-STUDY
present canon. It is important to note that the Buddhist tradition attributes the name Māgadhi Nirutti to the so-called Pāli language of their canon. Considering that both the teachers lived and worked in the same locality and at the same time, it is difficult to admit the claims of both.
Hemacandra calls this language ārsa ‘belonging to the sages' as did the medieval commentators the archaisms of the epics, and he notes its peculiarities in imitation of the chandasi of Pāņini. The later development of this language in the post-canonical works is called by the simple name prāksta by later writers. While Prākrit grammarians and to some extent Sanskrit rhetoricians noted and explained the distinctions between various Prākrit dialects, the writers cared little for them in actual practice. So the picture of these languages in the inscriptions and literary works is one of an inextricable intermixture of dialectal features as seen from the standard of the grammarians.
Ardha-Māgadhi is no uniform speech. Just as we can distinguish between the order and the younger strata of the canon, so also we can demarcate between the older and younger phases of the language, without, however, making the two divisions coincide in all the details (Note, for instance, the Nom. Sing in -e of younger prose and in -0 of older works in verse). A similar distinction may be observed in the later Jain Māhārāştri. It must be observed, however, that the linguistic demarcation between the later works of the canon and early works of the post-canonical literature is very uncertain and may even lack real basis in facts.
What is attempted here is not a pure description of ArdhaMāgadhi but also of what the Prākrit scholars call as Jain Māharāştri, the language which is an unbroken continuation of the canonical language. It is at the basis of Hemacandra's Prākrit Grammar and probably the most comprehensive of all the Prākrit languages.
II. LANGUAGE-STUDY 3 The study of a fanguage means primarily the ability to speak it and to understand it when spoken, and secon