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Introduction
53
word or a form However, there are clear indications that attempts are made in Apabhramsa to simplify Prakrit in various ways which would be partly clear by noting the special features of Apabhramsa. i) In Apabh. vowels are interchanged and an amount o! liberty is taken with regard to the quantity of vowels : this explains the termination like ha' or hu and he or hu for one and the same case and the shortening of Nom.sg. 7 of the standard Prakrit into u which comes to be added to many words in Apabh. as seen from words like punu, vinu, sahu, etc. ii) There is a less masculine pronunciation of m which often becomes nasalised v. iii) There is a tendency to change s into h in the Declensional terminations. This explains some of the queer forms: Nom pl. form dēvaho noted by Markandeya and others is either to be traced back to Vedic devāsah or it is a generalisation from forms like candramasah; davaha from Pk. davassa; taha from tassa simplified as tāsa whose counterpart tasu also is used in Apabh.; tahi from tamsi; and ahu from aso. Sanskrit s is seen as h in Awesta and in Iranian dialects. This change is noted by Hemacandra in a few Präkrit words, and it is in Māgadhi alone that it is seen in Gen. terminations. Even at present a Gujarāti dialect uniformly reduces s to h. It is possible that this change is a racial characteristic that came to be generalised later on. iv) Prākrit conjucts a often smoothened to simplify pronunciation. v) Case terminations are dropped in Nom. Acc. and Gen; here is a tendency to become non-inflexional. vi) The phonetic changes iniluence the conjugational forms which are being simplified and reduced in number. vii) Indeclinables and particles have changed their forms often beyond recognition, and in some cases they cannot be traced back to Sanskrit through Prakrits possibly being drawn from vernaculars or Deśabhāṣās. viii) Svārthe or pleonastic affixes like ka, da, la, etc., are seen in many words. ix) And lastly there is an abundance of Desi words and Dhātvädeśas.
Attraction of Apabh. Speech-On the whole there is a liquidity and smoothness about the flow of Apabh. verses which show many new metres based not on the number of syllables but on the quantity of mātrās, which can be better sung: and which are characterised by plenty of rhyme. It is no wonder, therefore, that Apabh. was a favourite medium of popular poetry as early as 6th century A.D. if not even earlier. Guhasena of Valabhi, whose epigraphic records range from 559 to 569 A.D., is said to have composed poems in Sanskrit, Prākrit and Apabh. Uddyotanasūri (778 A.D.)
1 See, for instance, sõsaü ma, etc on iv 365; kheddayam, etc., on iv. 442; Ludwig
Alsdorf : Bemerkungen zu Pischel's Materialien, etc., in Festschrift M. Winternitz,
pp. 29 36 2 See i. 262-3, iv 229-300; Pichel's : Grammatik der Präkrit-sprachen 8264. 3 The Sanskrit style of poets like Jayadēva betrays Apabhrama influence.
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