Jain Journal 2003 07

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

Page 29

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JAIN JOURNAL VOL-XXXVIII, NO. 1 JULY 2003
including Pāli and Ardhamāgadhī, supposed to be sabba-sattānam mulabhāsā, the original and most prestigeous language of all beings of North India in the 5th to 3rd centuries B.C.E., during the Mauryan period. In the South too, a similar position prevailed in the Satavahana age. After the fall of the Mauryas and the Satavahanas, overall political prestige of Sanskrit rose linearly that it eclipsed the prestige of Prakrit. From Rudradāman (2nd century C.E.) onwards royal edicts changed from Prakrit to Sanskrit. Then Vākāṭakas and the Pallavas who were initially in favour of Prakrit, also drifted towards Sanskrit. The onwards nowhere, a shift from Sanskrit to Prakrit is seen in the history of edicts in the South or in the North.
Jainism found Prakrit a useful medium to propagate their faith, in the North. As a corollary, they sould have preferred Prakrit to Kannada. But, with their commitment to the language of the people, they rightly opted for Kannada, the lingua franca of the region. They did not reject Sanskrit but confined it to the elite and official hierarchy. However, ratio of Sanskrit inscriptions never overtook the higher frequency of Kannada. Even the inscriptions prefaced with Sanskrit stanzas, would narrate the rest of text in chaste Kannada, couched in prose in between. Often prose passages consist of a long string of epithets, but beautifully arrnaged in different patterns such as anuprāsa, samkhyāpūrva, akṣaramālā and antādi, sabdālankāra, and arthālankāra. Some are composed in Campu style, and admixture of verse and pose, employing desi metres such as Akkara, Şatpadi and Tripadi.
Epitome
The early inscriptions engraved on the boulders of Candragiri at Shravanabelagola, some of them being very brief to the point, normally do not mention the ruling King's or his chief's name, the regnal year, the Śaka date and the ruling country. They form a class by themselves and directly deal with the subject of the record and mention the name of the deceased monk, nun or householder. Without either invocatory or imprecatory formalities, the content of the record glows sith vivid description enveloped in high flown eulogy of the person who voluntarily embraced death. The unaffected simplicity of local language and treatment of the subject deserves a special mention. The phonological, morphological, semantic and other linguistic traits of Pre-Old Kannada are furnished. Based on the Jaina epigraphs from