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9
evidences of a careful revision. By all standards this is a unique, exceptional and extremely valuable Apabhramsa Ms. It is indicative of an Apabharamsa literary and linguistic tradition that was still living and vigorous. The age of the palm leaf is inferred to be not later than the thirteenth century, and as such it is quite near to the date of the text.
The second and the only other Ms. of the Neminahacariya is a paper Ms. (here styled). It is from the Vijayadevasuri's Collection at L. D. Institute of Indology. It contains 113 leaves. Each leaf measures 30x191 cm. with 3 (right and left) and 2 (above and below) cm, margins. There are about 21 lines per side and 58 to 64 letters per line. The Ms. is supposed to be written in the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
In orthography the Ms. presents a complete contrast to the Ms. . Its scribe seems to have little education and was obviously ignorant of the language of the Ms. He has copied his prototype mechanically, without properly understanding the writing4. As a result he has consistently confused and misread a number of signs and letters. Confusion of qand, and ,,,,, and द्रू, तू and न्, प्, य् and म् म् and स् च्छ् and त्थू, छ, टु डु and डूढ़, त् and, etc. abound. The whole Ms. bristles with them. This creates great difficulties, at times unsurmountable, in making out the text on its own.
One interesting point in the orthography of these Mss. may be noticed in passing. At several places the shape of the letter is such that it can be easily read as . Now as has been noticed by one of us elsewhere, among the Desya words recorded by Hemacandra, there are a few pairs which have identical meanings, but the forms differ in their initial consonant, it being in one case and in another; e. g. paḍuvaiaṁ (6, 14) and maḍuvaiam (6, 146), both meaning tīkṣṇa; pulasio (6,55) and mulāsio (6, 135), both meaning agnikana or sphulinga; puaini (6, 54) (= duḥsila) and muaiņi (6, 135) (=ḍumbi), purapuria (6, 55) (=utkaṇṭhā) and muramuriam (6, 136) (=raṇaraṇakaṁ) etc. This was explained on the assumption that there was real phonological change; initial p in these words had actually changed to m. But now from the orthog raphy of the Neminahacariya Mss., it appears certain that in the case of the above-noted Desya words also some of the manuscripts of Desya lexicographical works consulted by Hemacandra had such a shape of initial
4.
5.
For Jacobi's observations on the language and orthography of this Ms., see Bhavisattakahā, Introduction, p. 2 (English translation, S. N. Ghosal, Journal of the Oriental Institute, Baroda 11, 3, 1953 ph. 234--241); and Sanatkumāracaritam, Einleitung, p. XXX, section V (English translation, S. N. Ghosal, Journal of the Oriental Institute, Baroda, VI, 2-3, 1957, p. 99-100).
H. C. Bhayani, Studies in Hemacandra's Desinamamalā (1965), p. 56, items No. 318 to 321.
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