Jain Journal 1996 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 28

126
JAIN JOURNAL VOL-XXX No. 4, April 1996
Preface
[3] I am not alone to feel the want of a handy manual of Śauraseni by far the most important of prose dialects of the Indian drama. Who would ever base the works (surely for their period very valuable) of Hoefer or Lassen?. Or who would have the courage to guide his hearers through the primeval forest of Pischel's grammar ? Even a specialist, who is, indeed, accustomed to all sorts of fares sees himself, in all respects, in this stupendously diligent and fundamental work to which he is constrained to pay heed confess that Pischel's treatise is nearly not to be perused. The overwhelming fullness of materials in sheer discriminationless types squeezed into 400 pages and more makes the hunt for a single form agonising: the book is a typographical Hydra which is repelled by the head definitively notwithstanding the index prepared by Wickremasinghe.'
Now, it is self-evident that the advanced student will soon need to be acquainted with one or the other of the dramas and if he at all entertain any serious endeavour he must rest contented with reading the Prakrit portions merely with the help of their chāyās but will be also expected to be led into the understanding of the dialects per se as well. The present manual would serve that purpose. I have drawn up and worded it in such a cryptic, concise manner, and as its title [4] gives out the principal stress has been placed upon Śauraseni. Of the other dialects occurring in Indian dramas we have Māhārāṣtri and Magadhi considering that habitually Śakuntala will be studied, at least, by its chief divergencies.
For those who would like to make an intensive study of the Prakritspeeches I am giving here a list of the most important and pertinent works:
1. Bharatiyanāṭyaśāstra ed. Kāvyamālā No. 42. (XVII, 6-23).
2. Cowell, The Prakrita-Prakāśa: or, The Prákrit Grammar of Vararuci, with the Commentary (Manorama) of Bhámaha. Second Issue. London 1868. (1. Ausgabe Hertford 1854).
3. Hemacandra's Grammatik der Prakritsprachen, herausgegeben, übersetzt und erläutert von Richard Pischel. I Teil Halle 1877. II. Teil Halle 1880.
4. The Päiyalachchhi Namamālā, a Prakrit Kosha by Dhanapāla. Edited with critical notes, an introduction and a glossary by Georg Bühler. Göttingen, 1878.
1. With this naturally a contradiction does not arise, if I say, that Pischel with his grammar has produced a really fundamental work, on which my modest Handbook thoroughly rests.