Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 662

THE NON-INFLECTED GENITIVE IN APABHRAMśA : 193
for the six cases the latter was irrespectively used for all of them. But soon it was found that as it was used for so many cases it was not capable of indicating the various meanings of the different cases. So there developed a new device to indicate case-relations in the New Indo-Aryans. Independent words carrying definite case-indicating meanings were added to the oblique forms and these were used regularly as substitutes for the inflected words of the previous period.
Now it may be asserted that this was not a strange phenomenon appearing as a freak, on the contrary it was a development common to the speech-habit of all the New Indo-Aryans. Sometimes, again, these post-positions integrated in such a manner with the oblique-forms that the latter along with the post-positions assumed the semblance of original homogeneous words betraying phonetic decay due to their coming through the ages. Now all these facts-namely the loss of different inflections, the emergence of two case-forms-the direct and the oblique and the universal practice of employing the post-positions could lead but to the only conclusion that Ap. too, which is slightly archaic than these speeches and remains intimately connected with them by way of forming a stage in the evolution of the Aryan speech, must have manifested, at least shown, the beginning of similar features--particularly the tendency of disintegrating the inflectional elements of vocables.
In fact this shaking off of terminations indicated a great landmark in the development of the Aryan speech, since it deprived it of its synthetic character and gave it the stamp of an analytical one, which was something new in the entire history of the old Indo-Aryan. This affinity of Ap. with the modern Aryan speeches enables us to assume that the Aryan speech showed the beginnings of analytical features from the days of Ap., in which we notice first the tendency of disintegrating the inflectional elements. In this perspective it is possible for us to assert that the loss of inflection in gen, or nom. and acc., which Hemacandra prescribes, is quite natural to the speech and is not an outcome of confusions, to which Hemacandra is alleged to have fallen a victim. To make any attempt to deny it is to disown facts and make a distortion of the same. So we think that the statement, which Alsdorf has made, does not provide a correct assessment of facts.
We have referred above to the occurrence of two instances of uninflected genitive in the Bhavisatta kaha-a fact, which Jacobi accepted as true but was contradicted by Alsdorf. The latter doubted the GJ.V. 13