________________
INTRODUCTION
Marāțhi pāya, soyarika , Guj. sīyāla ; Hindi (dialectal) kāyara ; Kannada mayana, rāyam; etc.
The phenomenon of ýa-śruti is quite natural and justified in the evolution of Indian languages. To begin with, ya-like pronuncition of certain udvrtta vowels in Prākrit must have been detected by grammarians, but the practice and the degree of thoroughness of writing y might have differed from locality to locality and from school to school. Some grammarians appear to hint that some vowels, though written as vowels, are to be pronounced like y, possibly to avoid vowel combination. In Jaina MSS. of Prākrit works it is regularly used. In non-Jaina works, not preserved in Jaina Mss., it is absent. The Prākrit grammarians, both Jaina and non-Jaina, recognise it. The Jaina authors and writers might have consistently, if not mechanically, used it in their works and in their Mss. after any vowel before Hemacandra's time and generally after a and a subsequent to Hemacandra. But we cannot say that it was not at all used by non-Jainas, because non-Jaina grammarians have recognised it and some words in Modern Indian languages do show ya-śruti. These facts place us in a difficult position. The editor would be failing in his duty, if he sets aside the norm supplied to him by his MSS. Like Pischel a grammarian may like to eschew y in Máhārāsţri but an editor will have to be faithful to his material on the basis of which he is building the critical text. So I have retained ya-śruti following the best Mss., and in those cases where all the three mss. do not give ya-śruti I have noted the readings with PJB. The possibility of getting the Mss. of the Lilāvati in which ya-śruti is less frequent is not in any way ruled out: in fact, though present here and there, ya-śruti is not the regular feature in the extracts quoted by Kavi in his article referred to above."
These Mss. use the bindu ( - ) both for anusvāra and anunāsika. There is no agreement among them in giving a bindu for the anunāsika, I have admitted it, if P or y gives it. If the preceding vowel is required to be metrically short, I have represented that bindu as anunāsika ( ). otherwise it remains as a bindu ( - ).
It is a well recognised fact that the Prākrits use short ě and o before conjunct groups, in some of the terminations, when required by the metre, etc. The Devanagari script, however, is imperfect because there are no special symbols for è and o as in the case of Kannada script for instance. Though the Vedic Sanskrit admits short e and o, somehow the classical usage was satisfied with long e and o, with the result that
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
