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164
M. A. MEHENDALE
The first suggestion for the solution of the problem was made by SENART. He is of the opinion that since the meaning of rasand is partially identical with rasmi, there arose, out of the contamination of these two, a form like *raśni. Hence, according to SENART, tiranhu owes its origin to "trirani. By way of caution, however, he goes on to add, "...local names are subject to dialectic accidents, of which it is often difficult to state the origin and fix the measure."10
Though one may in general agree with SENART as regards the words of caution expressed by him, it is difficult to accepet his suggestion in respect of the derivation of tiranhu. For, apart from the considerations like those of contamination involved in it, the hypothetical form thus arrived at does not enable us to get over the second difficulty referred to above. The form "triraśni may help us to obtain tiranhi (én nh); but this form does not satisfactorily explain the change of the final vowel i>u (*triraśni> tiranhu): On the semantic side, the word rasana' girdle, etc.', has very little propriety in the name of a hill.
In a recent article on the subject already referred to above, Dr. KATRE has shown that SENART's suggestion could be bettered by taking the Sanskrit prototype of Prakrit tiranhu as "trirásna from rasna'a girdle." This is no doubt an advance over the suggestion of SENART, for it saves us from the labour of the supposed contamination; but with this explanation also the second difficulty regarding the change in the end vowel remains.
The difficulties in offering a satisfactory explanation of tiranhu have remained unsolved because the Sanskrit name of the hill is misleading. Leaving it therefore aside for a while, and keeping our attention on the last syllable of the Prakrit name, remembering at the same time that here we are dealing with the name of a hill, it will be seen that nhu in the given context can come only from Sk. snú. Now snú in the sense of the summit or edge of a mountain' occurs since the earliest times, and has been accepted as the collateral form of the more familiar sanu 'summit of a mountain'. snú has also been given by the Sanskrit lexicons. as an equivalent of sanu.12 Coming to tira, the fact that "the caves are situated in one of the three hills in which the mountain range (at Nasik) ends," or that the cave hill has a pyramidal form,13 suggests that the beginning of the hill-name tira may stand for a word meaning three'. Taken together, we arrive at the conclusion that the original Sanskrit counterpart of the Prakrit tiranku must have been trianu: trisānu, and that the Prakrit name actually owes its origin to a semi-tatsama from trisnu viz. tiramu. Both sanu and snú are surely appropriate as occurring in the name of a hill.
10. EI 8. 64.
11. Indian Linguistics, 14. 145. 1954.
12. Cf. snuh prasthaḥ sānur astriyam Amarakosa 2.8.4; also of. Abhidhanacintamani 1035; Vaijayanti 41.14.
13. Bhagvanlal INDRAJI, op. cit. p. 541.
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