Morphological Evidence For Dialectal Variety In Jaina Maharastri

Author(s): Nalini Balbir
Publisher: Nalini Balbir

Page 17

JAINA MĀHĀRĀŞTRĪ
519
karissan ti karisyāmîti anenâtītânāgatôpādānena... is the gloss of the tīkā): "The thought (which creates) bondage, viz. 'I have done / I shall do' is being made". The reading is certain; the form looks identical to a Sanskrit so-called "passive" -i aorist, which may be used very rarely with an active meaning os. But would not it be rather rash to think of such an explanation, all the more so since akāri here appears as a first person singular? 96
(III)
Old JM sources also retain another type of linguistic rarity, namely a small number of vaitālīya-stanzas composed “in einer Sprache, die man aufgrund ihres I für r, aber nicht Ś für s/s als die echte Ardhamāgadhi bezeichnen darf", to quote Alsdorf's words 97. They show how Eastern and Western dialects can mix together or at least can be found side by side.
So far, two groups of such stanzas had been brought to light by Alsdorf himself. The first one has been traced in the Uttarajjhāyānijjutti 98, the second one in the anonymous Maņipaticarita 99, a narrative work of unknown date closely connected with the Avaśyaka tradition. In the latter case, the metre has undergone many distortions in the course of time.
The importance of such verses lies in the fact that they can be seen as remains of the original Eastern dialect from which the Canon was later transposed, and thus of a stage earlier than the so-called “Ardhamāgadhi” of the Svetāmbara Canon and a "missing link dans notre reconstitution d'histoire linguistique” 100. In his Études jaina, Alsdorf observed that there had probably been more such
95. "Apparemment par influence des finales en -it", L. RENOU, Grammaire Sanscrite. Paris, 1930, $ 318, p. 441; ákāri is already Vedic, cf. L. RENOU, Grammaire de la langue védique. Lyon, 1952, $ 350; ubi alia.
96. There are only sporadic traces of this type of aorist in Middle-Indian, namely a few Pali forms: see, recently, von HINUEBER, Das ältere Mittelindisch. $ 462, with reference to GEIGER, S 177.
97. L. ALSDORF, Das Jätaka vom weisen Vidhura, WZKS 15 (1971), p. 28 – Kleine Schriften, p. 385.
98. Uttn 137, 138 : L. ALSDORF, Les études jaina. État présent et tâches futures. Paris, Collège de France, 1965, p. 23-25; IDEM, Ardha-Māgadhi in Die Sprache der ältesten buddhistischen Ueberlieferung... Herausgegeben von H. BECHERT. Göttingen, 1980, p. 17-23.
99. L. ALSDORF, Zwei Proben der Volksdichtung aus dem alten Magadha in Beiträge zur Indienforschung. Ernst Waldschmidt zum 80. Geburtstag gewidmet. Berlin, 1977, p. 17-24.
100. ALSDORF, Études jaina, p. 23.