Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 676

SOME INTERROGATIVE PARTICLES IN PRĀKRIT : 207
samiya < samyak in Ardhamāgadhi). One might be tempted to quote the Niya form kirna--' whoever', 'whatever' in support of the view that kinnä represents kena, but this Niya word may well represent a generalisation of the neuter form rather than a use of the instrumental for the nominative as suggested by Professor Burrow.8 kinnan and kiņņā mainly belong to Ardhamāgadhi and Jaina Māhāraștri. They are less restricted dialectally in their occurrence than the interrogative se-clauses, and are part of a general tendency to strengthen the particle kim in interrogations. This tendency is continued in the literary Prakrits, and is of course also a feature of Sanskrit. It is noteworthy that in the Prakrit of the dramas the type of strengthening particle used does not vary so much with the dialect of the speaker as with the style of the author : thus kim khu is used by Aśvaghoṣa in the Śäriputraprakarana; kim quite simply or kiṁ nu is preferred in all dialects by Sūdraka in the Mșcchakatika; Bhāsa almost invariably writes kim ņu khu; Kālidāsa uses kiṁ (nu) khu regardless of whether it is in the Mågadhi spoken by the policemen in Sakuntala or whether it in the Sauraseni of the Malavikāgnimitra, and sometimes he uses kim una < kim punah; Rājasekhara in the Karpūramañjarī uses only kim una. The list could be continued, and the Prākrit usage of these authors generally reflects the formulae used for interrogation in Sanskrit by these same authors, e.g., kim nu khalu is prevalent in the Sanskrit text of Bhâsa's dramas. The analysis of the interrogative constructions alone would be sufficient proof-if proof were needed that the literary Prākrits of the drama are highly artificial. The formulae for interrogation in particular reflect fashion and even individual style.
Apart from the three locutions se kena kāraṇena, se kim and kinnam which are so characteristic of the svetāmbara canon, there is another, rarer method of expressing 'why' in the canonical texts, which is nevertheless of interest. This is the phrase kassa heum 'why',
because of what?'. In this phrase it is quite clear that heum was used adverbially just as was nāma ‘by name' in Sanskrit. Edgertono has shown that hetu could be used adverbially both in Pāli and in Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit, and the Prākrit usage lends support to
7 Pischel, op. cit., p. 67. 8 T. Burrow, The Language of the Kharoşthi Documents fram Chinese
Turkestan, Cambridge 1937, p. 35. 9 F. Edgerton, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, New Haven 1953,
s. v. hetu.