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the peculiar, forceful and incongruous reading of a text. In this respect, we shall divide our examples into two groups. In group A, some of the grammatical texts are discussed, where the selection of a particular reading, instead of another, has caused us trouble in determining the linguistic features of a particular language. In group B, the reading of some Prakrit texts are analysed.
A. Grammatical texts
Let us first take Senart's edition of Kaccayana's Pali Grammar. Under the sūtra- jāyāya tudam-jāni patimhi (11. 7. 24. No. 34)- jāyā iccetāya tudamjāni iccete ādesā honti patimhi pare, jāyāya pati tudam pati jāyāya pati jānipati. Senart has read the sentence as tu-dampati meaning 'husband and wife', and after that the word is included in all the Pali Dictionaries. But most of the scholars including Senart himself were not happy with the reading. The tu prefixed to dampati is difficult to solve. T. W. Rhys Davids and William Stede's Pali-English Dictionary, The Pali Text Society, London, (1972) has explained the formation of the word thus :
"tudampati (dual) husband and wife. [tu - dial. for du, Skt dve. dampati from dama - domus, Skt. daypati - Gk, despotes; cf. also Kern Toev-II. 93. who compares tuyantuva for duvanduva)."
In reality, the word is not tudampati, but simply dampati as in Sanskrit, meaning husband and wife tu is in fact, an emphatic particle meaning 'but', and the passage means, "but (-tu) when jāyā is compounded with pati, we get the compound as dampati, jānipati and jāyāpati.
Coming to the field of Prakrit, the situation seems to be wrose. For one word, we could have several forms in Prakrit and at times it is difficult to think which one is correct. Take, for example, the reading isi in Cowell's edition of Vararuci's Prākṣta-prakāśa. Cowell has accepted the reading isi with a short initial i under the vrtti of a sūtra id-isat-pakva-svapna-vetasa-vyajana-mrdangāngāreșu, 1.3 i.e., (in a group of words beginning with işat etc. i is substituted for the first a), whereas he has given the variant reading with long i in the foot-note as isi. In fact, the reading with long i is the correct one, as in all the editions of all Prakrit grammarians so far kaown to us, the word ist with long i at the initial is given, which is also Cowell's reading in the foot-note.
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