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reviews and notices
Indian linguistics 36. 63-5 (1975)
SEN, Subhadra Kumar. Proto-New Indo-Aryan. Calcutta: Eastern Publications, 1973. viii; 182 pp. Rs. 25.
Reviewed by M. A. MEHENDALE, Deccan College, Poona
The present book, a doctoral thesis of Calcutta University, is written. to describe linguistically a stage in the development of Indo-Aryan which the author chooses to call Proto-New Indo-Aryan. The title of the work is somewhat misleading. One picks up the book with the thought that one would find in it the description of a linguistic stage which is arrived at by reconstruction on the basis of the oldest recorded stages of some of the New Indo-Aryan languages. But this is not what the author does. He informs us in his Preface that his work is the result of his study of the language recorded in the Dohākosas, and the allied Pahuḍadohā, Savayadhamadoha, verses quoted by Hemacandra in his Siddha-HemaSabdānusāsana ch. 8 and some Jaina works like the Kumarapalapratibodha, etc. He considers that the linguistic stage which he describes represents Avahaṭṭha i.e. the later phase of Apabhramša. But because this phase is very close to the oldest form of New Indo-Aryan, the author avoids calling his work a description of Avahaṭṭha, and calls it a description of Proto-New Indo-Aryan. He does it also because the term Avahaṭṭha is not used by major Prakrit grammarians. What, in essence, the author wishes to tell us is about the transitional stage between late Middle IndoAryan and early New Indo-Aryan. "This process of transition is neither uniform nor simultaneous in the different linguistic areas, Uniformity in the linguistic structure therefore is not to be expected. But a rough picture can be drawn out and the following pages are an attempt in that direction." (pp. 1-8). According to the author's estimate 'Avahattha is about 70 per cent Proto-NIA. Of the remaining 30 per cent 15 per cent form the Apabhrarśa strain and the other 15 per cent are its own peculiarities." (p. 18)
Once we realize exactly what we are going to get from the author, we find in his work a perfectly readable account of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary of this 'Proto-New Indo-Aryan'. To make his account more intelligible the author has prefixed to his description a brief sketch of the earlier stages of Indo-Aryan. All this forms part I of the book. Part II is supplementary to the first. The author gives in it specimens, with notes, of the texts on which his thesis is based. One wishes he had not called these specimens Proto-New Indo-Aryan
Madhu Vidya/639
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