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OCTOBER, 1992
Cambridge University, the book contains a list of publications by L A Schwarzschild on Middle Indo-Aryan year by year showing the progress and the development of her writings. The book has a grammatical index and indexes of Old, Middle and New Indo-Aryan words prepared respectively by Colin Mayrhofer and Royce Wiles. It is nicely printed and bound. The cover of the book is crowned with a manuscript folio which has enhanced the quality of the book.
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This book is not a full-fledged grammar on Prakrit, or on Middle Indo-Aryan, but several problematic topics on Prakrit and Apabbramsa focussed by her from time to time in different Journals are put together in a book form. As the articles are printed in a chronological order the pattern of a grammar book is not found. The problems discussed by Schwarzschild are not obviously touched by any earlier writers, such as, Christian Lassen (Institutiones Linguae Pracriticae, Bonnae ad Rhenum, 1837), Nicolaus Delius (Radices Pracriticae, Bonnae ad Rhenum 1839), E. B. Cowell (A Short Introduction to the Ordinary Prakrit of the Sanskrit Dramas with the Grammar and a List of Common Irregular Prakrit Words, London 1875), Eduard Müller (Beitrage zur Grammatik des Jaina-Prakrit Berlin, 1879), Richard Pischel (De Grammaticis Pracriticis, Vratislaviae, 1874, and Grammatik der Prakrit Sprachen, Strassburg, 1900), Richard Schmidt (Elementarbuch der auraseni, Hannover, 1924) and many others. But the problems raised by her are scholarly and deep thought-provoking, and the majority deal with broad concepts.
Apart from the fact that this is not a book on Grammar, her articles can be arranged fairly in a grammatical order in the following
manner :
I Phonology: 18, 19, 23, 24-4
II Morphology: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 20, 21, 25, 26-13
III Syntax: 22-1
IV Word-studies: 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17--7
V Miscellaneous: 10-1
In phonology, four articles are contributed and they are all very much thought-provoking. In Some Sporadic Changes of Vowels in Middle Indo-Aryan (No. 18, pp 134ff) and Some Unusual Sound Changes in Prakrit (No. 23, pp. 164ff.) her discussions on sporadic sound changes are straightforward. She has illustrated her paper by citing
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