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legend 10 stands in need of some revision in the light of additional materials11. made available by A. Shah. It should be noted in passing that among the thirtysix different texts collected by Shah there also figures the Kalaka story from Devacandra's Mülasudhi commentary. Of course Shah edited it19 independently of the present endeavour. As to the story of Ārāmasobha, now that we know it from the MC., H. Jain's view 13 on the influence of the Sugandhadasami story on it is to be revised. The MC. version of the Arāmasobha 18 prior to the earliest known version of the Sugandhadasami. One further consequence of this is that the question of the immediate Indian original of the Cinderella too shall have to be reconsidered.
Another aspect of the importance of the MC. is brought out by the fact that several Jain authors have drawn upon or borrowed liberally from its stories. We shall casually mention here only two such instances. In his commentary on Haribhadra's Samyaktvasaptatii Samghatilaka Suri has reproduced almost verbatim the Kalaka story from the MC. The slight changes he has made here and their mostly consist of substituting synonyms and changing constructions. Similarly on the strength of significant verbal resemblances it seems probable that the Mūla deva story in MC. served as a source for the version found in the Kumāra pala pratibodha.
In this connection, we should also mention a few stories of this collection that clearly
orve the stamp of a folk-tale. The side story about the origin of Gajāgrapada, the name of a mountain, occurring in the Arya-Mahagiri story belongs to the cycle of the stories of cuckoldry such as we find in popular collections like the Sukasa ptati. The story of Bhima and Mahabhima presents a version of a widely current tale illustrating the principle "You reap what you sow.' The story of Dhanyā occurring also in the Kumarapala. bratibodha, has the same motif as a Gujarati folk tale, ghanka ane ghanki ni varta The tale of the male and female wood-worm'. A third version of the same motif is found in the story of the monkey couple transformed into human beings that we come acrorss in some of the tale-groups connected with the life-story of Jambusvāmin (see, e.g., pp. 99-100 in Gunapala's Jambucariya. It also occurs in Jambu's biography given in Hemacandra's Sthavirāvali).
Linguistically too the MC. has its several points of interest. Firstly it has one whole story viz.. Sulasakkhānu, in Apabhramsa. It is called Akhyāna as well as Sandhi, and its structure conforms with that of other known poems of the Sandhi-type in Late Apabbramsa As has been stated by the editor (p. 43, footnote), this Sulasāsandhi is found also as a self-contained work preserved separately from the MC. Besides this, MC. has numeron short passages in Apabhramsa. Their value as specimens of the Apabhramsa of Hemacandrats times is quite obvious.
Secondly, the Prakrit of the MC. has numerous words, constructions and idioms which
nificant for the study of Apabhramsa and Early Gujarati. The following few words and forms, picked up in a casual reading of the first thirtyfive pages only. would be to illustrate the point (Abbreviations: DN.=Dešinamamālā of Hemacandra. SH.Siddabeme of Hemacandra).
fagyi (3. 56) gerast (cf. DN. 3, 36; SH. 8, 2, 174; PC, 5, 13, 9 etc.) fifay (3. 65) "a wayward rascal' (cf. the Dimdins of Lāța described in the Padaindia
Bhāņa.) इंदोयग (20,3) इन्द्रगोपक (cf. इंदोज at Samdesarasaka, 143).
10. N. Brown, The Story of Kalaka, 1933. 11. A. P. Shah, Sri-Kālakācārya-Kathā-Sangrah, 1949. 12. See pp. 6-22 of the work. 19. H. Jain, Sugandhadasami Katha, 1966, Introduction, pp. 16-18. 14. Samyaktvasaptati. with Sanghatilaka's Commentary, ed., by Lalitvijay Muni, 1916,
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