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VERSIONS OF ASOKA'S MINOR ROCK EDICT
91
me minor rock edis the presence of his
ence of the king
(15) Initial h: As in the Mysore version, we have instances of adding h before an initial vowel in such cases as hevan (evam) s, ru, mk, yr, hesă (esā) yr. hetā in s is quite understandable. As we have no parallel instances in the north-west or the west, the presence of hevar, hesă in the original draft of the minor rock edict can be attributed only to the influence of the king's speech.
(16) As was noted while dealing with the Mysore version in the earlier paper, the main morphological features like the nom. sg. mas, and neut. ending -e7 and the loc. sg. ending -sits found in the minor rock edict are eastern. Their presence was explained to be due to the fact that they were known in the north-west through the versions of the major rock edicts. These features occur in the remaining versions of MRE as well. Some other peculiarities of noun, pronoun, and verb forms may be noted below.
(a) Nom. acc. sg. neut. - Though more frequently we find the eastern -e, the western ending -an is found in sātirekan and arokań in yr.
(b) Dat. sg. -The non-eastern ending -ya is found in etāya athāya ru, kpb, yr; the eastern -ye in etāye athāye s.
(c) Acc. pl. m.--The eastern influence in this regard can be seen also in the final portion of the yr version, for which parallel passages in the other versions are not available. Thus we have instances like hathiyarohāni, banbhanāni, etc., which show the eastern -äni ending. LUEDERS (Philologica Indica, p. 278 ff.) has shown this ending to be of old-Ardhamågadhi. These endings are found in the north-west*) and in a few cases in the west so and hence their occurrence in the original draft is explainable.
(d) Among the pronouns, the nom. sg. of the first person is hakań in b, yr which is an eastern form. Its presence in the minor edict is to be attributed to the influence of the king's speech. (cf. hevam etc, above).
(e) In the instr. sg., the non-eastern mayā is given by yr, and the eastern mumayā by b, kpb and yr give me, which, however, is confused with the gen. sg. form.
(f) In the second person, the forms tuphe yr and tupakan (= tuphāka (m)) ru are north-western as explained above, p.90 (cluster sm).
47. Cf. upåsake, phale, sāvane, etc. 48. Cf. Jambudipasi.
Cf. yutani, grahathani, etc. Cf. khamdhāni, gharastāni, pasamdäni, pavajitani in Gas given by HULTZSCH, p. lxii; the proper western ending is-e. Cf. yute, athe, etc.
Madhu Vidya/276
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