Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

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

Page 677

208 : SHRI MAHAVIRA JAINA VIDYALAYA GOLDEN JUBILEE VOLUME
this view. Sometimes heum might not appear so readily to be an adverb, as for instance in the phrase kassa ņam tam heum for what reason is that?' (Süyagadanga II. 7). An analysis of this phrase shows that tam is the pronoun 'that', and not a pronoun adjective that agrees with heum; the literal translation of the sentence into Sanskrit would be tat kena hetună. The adverbial use of heum is very clear in the repeated phrases of the Süyagaçanga (II. 1) ņo päņassa heuTM dhammañ ãikhejjā, no vatthassa heuṁ......no leñassa heuṁ......no sayanassa heur he should not teach the law for the sake of a livelihood, for the sake of clothes, nor for the sake of a house or a bed...'. Apart from the adverbial use of heum, the phrase kassa heum is interesting in that it almost certainly represents a stage in the development of the usual interrogative kisa 'why?' in Prakrit, Pāli kissa. The change of kassa to kissa is easily explicable by the influence of kim 'what', 'why'. The way in which this influence made itself felt can be seen from a Päli Jätaka text10 where kissa is used as a genitive neuter, as opposed to kassa in the masculine. It is not surprising that kim should influence the neuter forms, and particularly that kim
why ?' should influence kassa heum 'why?' to form kissa (heum), Pāli kissa hetu 'why?'. Examples of this use of kissa are found in the later parts of the “vetāmbara canon, e.g., kissa ņam tumam mama puttam egante ukkurudiyãe ujjhāvesi'why do you cause my son to be abandoned in a deserted place, a place used for refuse?' (Nirayāraliyão I). With simplification of the double consonant and compensatory lengthening kissa became kīsa in Prākrit, and figured as a very usual form of interrogation in Jaina Māhārāştri texts, such as the Vasudevahindi and the Līlāvaikahā. It was also used in the Māgadhi and Sauraseni of the dramas, but its frequency is very much dependent not on the dialect, but on the individual taste of the author : thus it is absent from Kālidāsa's works and rare in the Kuvalayamālā. The form kisa had to some extent become independent of the interrogative pronoun in Jaina Māhārāștrī, and did not correspond to the normal genitive form, which was kassa in the masculine and neuter, and lise, kie in the feminine. kisa became rare in Apabhramsa, but it has survived in the Old Gujarati as kisā, kiśā, which, as K. R. Norman has pointed out, can hardly be derived from kidssa.11
10 W. Geiger, Pāli Literatur und Sprache, Strassburg 1916, 111. 11 K. R. Norman, JRAS 1964, p. 67.