________________
95
a stop to all communications, I am ignorant of what has been done in India towards the promotion of Sanskrit philology and I am anxious to hear, and if possible to get the more important publications which have appeared within the last 5 years.
Though those five years were very hard and trying times for us, still I have been able to carry on research especially in the field of Apabhramsa language and literature. I have published, in Roman characters, the afaga or 9946authat the first Apabhramsa text that has yet appeared, together with a German introduction and an outline of Apabhramsa grammer. I shall send you a copy of my book by next opportunity. At present our post is apparently in some disorder.
I have ready for the press another Apabhrmasa book, a specimen of the नेमिनाह चरिउ by हरिभद्र a disciple of चन्द्रसूरि. The work is written in dialect different from the common Apabbra. masa taught by Prakrit grammarians. Ofrue wrote in Anahilla Patana in Samvat 1216; he was therefore not only a contemporary of the great 485 but must have known him personally since both of them lived in the same town. Yet it is a curious fact, that He who treats of the Apabhramsa language at great length in the 4th 97 of his Prakrit grammer, takes no notice of the idiom in which his countryman and contemporary affha composed his great flot. This idiom was, I have reason to believe, the THT TH i. e. the literary form of the vernacular of Gujerat and western Mālwi during th 11th and 12th centuries A. D. I have met with about a dozen stanzas in same dialect in works of afu who preceded andre by about 70 years. The idiom in question seems to have been Apabhramsa used by the pan777 while the fourtats wrote in the Apabbramsa of the grammarians. The H ohet which is composed in
the latter idiom, is Digambar work. I am, therefore, almost Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat www.umaragyanbhandar.com