Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 664

THE NON-INFLECTED GENITIVE IN APABHRAMŚA : 195
possessed the non-inflected forms, but which Alsdorf interprets differently in his endeavour to refute the occurrence of uninflected gen. in Ap. We quote first the verse, which Hemacandra presents as his illustration to the sutra IV. 345. Pischel presents the verse as :
samgarasaahim ju vanniai delkhu amhāra kartu! aïmattaham cattamkusahaṁ gaya kumbhaiṁ dārantu |||
Pischel translates the verse as :
“Look he, who is praised in hundreds of fights, is my husband, who splits the temples of wild elephants that defy the iron rod (of the rider)."5
Alsdorf suggests that the word gaja can never be considered as an instance of uninflected gen., since it stands as the first member of a compound, in which kumbhāir stands also as a constituent. Now the question is whether Alsdorf is justifiable. Here it should be mentioned that there are certain difficulties, for which it is very hard for us to accept the proposition of Alsdorf. In the second line of the verse it is to be found that there occur too adjectives namely aimattaha and cattankusaha, which qualify the word gaya elephant' and describe certain conditions of the same. Now if we be ready to accept the suggestion of Alsdorf we shall have to construe them as standing in apposition to and as such describing some situation of the entire compounded form gaya-kumbhāin the temples of elephants'-a supposition, which would be meaningless both from the standpoints of grammar and significance. In the Tatpuruşa compound, one must not forget, the emphasis lies on the second member of the compound, i. e., kumbhāim in the present case. Now if what is spoken about the elephant be spoken about its temples, as has been done here, one must be put to a great confusion regarding the real significance of the proposition. This can never be the situation and we can boldly say that the adjectives must have stood for gaya and not for kumbhain. So Alsdorf's statement "the construction is free, not usual but not impossible "6 does not conform to reason. A similar case is to be noted here in the verse IV. 384, which reads according to Pischel:
5 "Siehe, der in Hunderten von Kampfen geschildert wird, das ist
unser Geliebter, der die Stirnerhöhungen überaus wilder Elefanten
spaltet, die dem Haken (des Reiters) nicht gehorchen." 6 “Die konstruktion ist frei und nicht gerade gewöhnlich, aber
sicher nicht unmöglich."