Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 658

THE NON-INFLECTED GENITIVE IN APABHRAMŠA : 189
justify Jacobi, suggests that the two words assumed to be the forms of non-inflected genitive, are not in fact such, as in Gune's edition the second one occurs with certain modification as : jaņavindi vi. Alsdorf, who unhesitatingly accepts the reading of Guņe, emends the first expression as amarindi vi (Apabhramsa Studien, p. 56). He made this emendation and seemed apparently justified in doing this, as he intended to maintain conformity with the rhyme of the word janavindi, which comes immediately after it. As Alsdorf accepts this reading of Guņe and modifies the text accordingly he assumes both the words amarindi and janavindi as being infected and bearing the termination of the loc. sing. Here it should be noticed that Alsdorf does not speak anything about two more uninflected forms, which Jacobi mentions and which stand as loyana (for loyanahī 49, 6) and taruņi (for taruņihi 399, 10) (Bhavisattakahā, Grammatik 8 23).
From the above-referred extract of Alsdorf it follows that Pischel subscribed to the view of Hemacandra and admitted the loss of inflection in the case of genitive to be a fact (Grammatik der Prakrit Sprachen 8 369). That this phenomenon is not a sporadic manifestation, but an outcome of a long-continued tendency in Ap., proceeds from the fact that two other cases too-namely the nom. and acc. both in the sing. and plur. throw off the terminations (He. IV. 344). Alsdorf, who has totally denied the occurrence of the uninflected gen. in Ap., has also come forward to explain such uninflected nom. and acc. forms in his own way. According to him such forms are, in fact, inflected like the regular ones, but they are characterised by certain tendencies, which go as the distinctive features of various NIA speeches (Apabhramsa Studien, pp. 5 ff). That Alsdorf does not give a correct view of facts will be clear from what follows.
It should be mentioned here that the phenomenon of the disintegration of terminations, which showed its first beginnings in Ap., became more prevalent in the subsequent period. In the late Ap., which was otherwise known as Avahattha in the east and Pingala in the west, all the cases showed the tendency to discard their infiections, as a result of which there developed with the people a practice to employ the non-inflected words, i.e., base-forms, in a sentence or a verse. This task imposed a heavy premium upon the imagination of a man, who had to ascertain the meaning of a line by considering the position of words in the sentence. As these analytical tendencies characterised the speech of the later Pkt., particularly Ap. and late-Ap., it is not proper to disown the feature and consider it unreal as a figment of imagination.