Morphological Evidence For Dialectal Variety In Jaina Maharastri

Author(s): Nalini Balbir
Publisher: Nalini Balbir

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N. BALBIR
the influence of common speech, and will have to be supplemented
by phonology and vocabulary. 4. A few instances have shown the elimination of innovations at
work, or the normalization of intrusive dialect forms. 5. Writers or commentators very seldom take notice of intrusive,
archaic, new or foreign forms. In other words, they are generally insensitive to the use of different dialects. It was probably no surprise to them. Their grammatical observations mainly concern cases of deviation from Sanskrit grammatical rules which they merely state as being due to prāksta-śaili-. There is however a wellknown exception, namely Uddyotanasūri, the author of the famous Kuvalayamālā who apparently thought about his own way of using dialects and gave a credible picture of linguistic variety in daily life 113
In a paper which came to my knowledge only in May 1988. Prof. Bhavani has also listed instances of the past active participle in -aiya- (< Pāvika-) and proposed a fourfold classification of the past participle extended with -ellaya which can be used 1) attributively, 2) predicatively in the simple past sense, 3) predicatively to convey pluperfect, 4) predicatively in the present perfect sense : Notes on the Prakrit of the Early Commentaries of the Jain Canon, in
Pratishthan Patrika", Research Bulletin of the Rajasthan Oriental Institute Jodhpur, 1987, p. 114-120 [113-124).
RÉSUMÉ
Deux groupes de textes relevant de genres littéraires différents sont ici examinés : d'une part, d'anciens commentaires versifiés du Canon śvetāmbara (niryukti, bhāşya), de l'autre, des cuvres narratives (Vasudevahindi, Tarangavai, Avaśyaka-cūrņi...). On cherche à repérer dans ce corpus, dont le dialecte dominant est la māhārāştri jaina archaïque, des traces morphologiques incontestables de l'influence d'autres dialectes. (1) Ce sont : A. des traits caractéristiques de l'ardhamāgadhi (nomin. sg. en -e, loc. sg. -msi, instr. sg. -asā dans la flexion thématique, absol. en -ttānam, aor. « moyen » en -itthā) dont on peut souvent montrer que l'intrusion est conditionnée stylistiquement; B. quelques désinences verbales d'occurrence rare dans le prakrit canonique, que les progrès de la documentation montrent attestées en jm. (1. sg. présent -am, désinence -e en valeur de prétérit, participe en -tavam, forme fossilisée de l'aor. en -īya); C. certaines désinences qui évoquent l'apabhramsa (cas direct sg. -a des thèmes en -ā, absol. en -evi, 1. sg. présent -ami, participe
113. See Kuvalayamālā ed. A. N. UPADHYE. Bombay, 1970 (Singhi Jain Series 46), p. 77 ff.; and Lilāvaīkahā ed. by the same scholar. Bombay, 1949 (Singhi Jain Series 31): the author himself says that he is writing in marahatha-desi-bhāsā, p. 75 ff.