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THE PROBLEM OF THE SO-CALLED T-ŚRUTI IN THE MSS. OF CERTAIN EARLY JAIN PRAKRIT TEXTS
--H. C. Bhayani, Ahmedabad
1. Several scholars have noted and discussed the striking peculiarity of the manuscripts of some early Svetāmbara Jaina texts. Sometimes it is wrongly called t-sruti. It can be briefly described as follows:
Intervocalie k, g, c, j, t, d and y of Sanskrit were historically lost in Mābārāsiri Prakrit. It was mostly the practice of Svetāmbara Jain Mss. and many non-Jain Mss of Western India to write y (or y, after a back vowel) under certain specifiable conditions to fill the resulting hiatus, which was however generally maintained elsewhere. In the case, however, of certain Mss of early Jain śvetambara texts in Prakrit we find a tendency to write
instead of y under the same circumstances. The practice was quite sporadic and random : We have forms with such a t or y or with the hiatus preserved, side by side : we find the same form written alternatively in its several occurrences; and two hiatuses in one and the same form are treated differently.
2. Forms with such an interposed t are found in some Mss of the Svetāmbara canonical texts, their early commentaries (Niryuktis, Cūrnis, etc.) and some early narrative works like the Vasudevahindi. In the Mss of the last mentioned work they are frequent and in those of the Madhyama-khanda of the Vasudevahimdi, every side of the Ms folios is scattered with such forms."
3. There is no justification for designating such a t as t-sruti. The term is obviously coined after y-fruti and v-fruti. But y (or v under certain conditions) taking the place of an elided intervocalic consonant was a phonetic pheomenon : It was a glide (fruti) which developed to fecilitate transition from one vowel to another. But the t inserted between two vowels in writing had no such basis in
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