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Grammatical Riddles from Jain works
Al-la is the vocative of the dvandva formed by ad- 'to eat' and lã - 'to take' (cf. Palsule 1955, 168 s.v. ādāne)16.
* ko krīḍārtha-dhātur vadet "ko'ṣṭavimśatayā prasiddhim agamad varṇaḥ kakā-lekhake ?" (P-12)
Who, being a root meaning 'to play', would say "Which is the letter of the consonant chart that is known to be the 28th ?" - Root 'to play' ! the letter 1.
The last question stated in a rather simple way points to the root las, recorded in the Dhatupaṭhas (cf. lasa śleṣaṇa-krīḍanayoḥ, Pāṇ. Dhatup. 1.746 = Hemac. Dhatup. 1.543; Palsule 1955, 172 and 196). The root which was the speaker in the question has to take the form of the vocative when it becomes the addressee in the answer (las lasatīti kvip prathamā si, vyañjanāc ca si-lopah, he laḥ, ct.); lah is also the nominative form for the la-kāra.
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4. Such an elementary prerequisite as the knowledge of the alphabet and of the Sanskrit phonemes has been variously applied in the context of riddle-making.
First, the varnas are useful because they provide convenient and obvious monosyllables for praśnottaras :
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tavargge pañcamaḥ ko vā? (kumjarena; Jayasimhasūri, Dharmopadeśamālā-vivaraṇa p. 43)
What is the fifth letter in the group of cerebrals? - na
khāntaṁ brūhi kim ṇāntaṁ icchasi ? (īhālaṁkārasangatam; Bhavadeva, Pärśvanathacarita 2.224)
Tell the letter which comes after kha (and) which one do you require coming after na ? - ga (and) tam.
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Jain Education International
In the 15 verses of the Praśnāvalī, the last question of the riddle invariably concerns a letter (varna), more precisely a consonant or a class of consonants (varga). It can be expressed very simply under the form : What is the third consonant (vs. 2), the twentieth (vs. 4), the twenty-first (vs. 5), the twenty-sixth (vss. 8-9), the twenty-seventh (vss. 10-11), the twenty-eighth (vs. 12; above), the thirtieth (vs. 15), meaning that all answers will contain respectively ga, na, pa, ya, ra, la, and sa. A short descriptive statement can replace the serial number: the questions 'What is the last phoneme of the last group ?' (vs. 7) and 'What is the last phoneme
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