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Grammatical Riddles from Jain works
271
- Praśnottaras where the ultimate aim is to discover a grammatical technical term (III);
- Praśnottaras where the ultimate aim is to discover a grammatical sūtra (IV);
- Praśnottaras concerned with knowledge of metrics (V), since chandas can be considered as an appendix of grammars.
1. Besides the corpus of Jain narrative works just mentioned, where riddle-verses generally form a small separate section and are exchanged as a pastime between a group of friends, members of a learned gosthi or a bride and bridegroom just after marriage, the sources used for the present investigation include three specialized texts :
1.1 The Praśnottara-sasti-ekašata (=JP) is from the pen of Jinavallabha, a prominent Śvetāmbara ācārya from the Kharatara-gaccha who lived in the last quarter of the 11th and the first of the 12th century and has many works to his credit. Jinavallabha's work is not a sästra because it completely lacks definitions. Except for the first mangala-verse dedicated to Pārsvanātha, the remaining 159 stanzas are riddle-verses, including the two last ones where the author gives the names of his spiritual masters and his own (vss. 159-160). Each of this riddle-verse is followed by the name of the variety it represents and by the answer. Since Jinavallabha's work is obviously meant to display excellence and cleverness in the topic, these mere indications are by no means sufficient to make the common reader able to understand the process of the riddle. Therefore a commentary is indispensable.
The printed text of the Praśnottara is found in a book where various small texts, mainly hymns, are collected : Śrīstotraratnākaradvitiyabhāgah satīkah. Śrī Yaśovijaya Jainasamskrta Pāthaśālā, Mehsana, vīra samvat 2440/A. D. 1914, p. 1a-33b. Each verse is followed by an anonymous Sanskrit avacūri (here : Ed.). Besides this edition, the following two manuscripts have been used for the present investigation and will be quoted whenever they are found to be illuminating :
-Al : manuscript No. 5000 kept in the L. D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad; 32 pages; tripātha-type; prsthamātrā-script; copied in sam. 1686 ( = A. D. 1629).
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