Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 281

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M. A. MEHENDALE
published in the Bulletin of Deccan College Research Institute which includes his Presidential Address at the last session. I may add that a paper of C. R. SANKARAN and his collaborators on 'Structure in Speech-The Physical Reality of the Phoneme' is awaiting publication in the Sonderheft of the Fernmelde-technische Zeitschrift of Bonn.
II
I shall now turn to say some words on a problem which I think is of some importance to the study of MIA languages. I had originally planned to give a critical review together of LUEDERS' Beobachtungen über die Sprache des buddhistischen Urkanons and EDGERTON'S Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar, to both of which I have already referred. This has, however, not been possible. My review of the first part of LUEDERS' Beobachtungen has been already published in the 17th Volume of the Bulletin of the Deccan College Research Institute (1955) pp. 53-75. I therefore planned to give a review of the second part of LUEDERS' book as the main theme of my talk today. Considerations of time again have compelled me to restrict myself only to a few points.
In the Zweites Hauptstück of this book are included LUEDERS' views regarding the phonological and morphological peculiarities of the eastern language of the original Buddhist canon. About the former, we get a detailed discussion of such phenomena as the softening of surds, loss of intervocal consonants, and the treatment of the consonant clusters. About morphology, however, what has survived is only the late Professor's remarks on the flexion of the nominal stems in -a.
In order to assess the phonological peculiarities of the original canon, LUEDERS starts from what he considers to be the eastern characteristics of the Asokan inscriptions, and if he finds that these same also. occur in some instances in Päli, he regards them as borrowings from the For the solution of this problem, then, it is of importance to examine the Asokan data very critically and come to certain conclusions. as to what may be called eastern and what non-eastern in the Asokan inscriptions.
LUEDERS regards softening of the voiceless stops as an eastern characteristic and for this he gives instances of the change of k>g, t>d. kkh>ggh, and tt or tth>dd or ddh. For the change of k>g he cites (§87) the following from the Asokan evidence-Sk. loka>loga (cf. hidaloga, palaloga) in the Jaugada separate edict and Sk. adhikṛtya> adhigicya in the Calcutta-Bairāț inscription.
Now in a paper published in the Journal of the Oriental Institute, Baroda, Vol. I. 240-244 (1951-52). I have shown that the two separate
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