________________
viii
FOREWORD
interesting light that such formations can throw on linguistic
evolution. 115. The chronological stage at which the local regional language steps
into gradually take its place alongside with Sanskrit. I shall briefly dwell upon these seriatim : 1. Sanskrit as language of records :
These pedastal inscriptions numbering nearly two thousand and spread over a time-span of nearly ten centuries all drawn from a highly limited area of Gujarat provide unequivocal evidence for the continuous use of Sanskrit language as the most popular and accepted medium for maintaining records of enduring value. It is highly significant that Sanskrit continued to hold its sway until late nineteenth century when the first indications become availableatleast as far as this compilation is concerned of the regional language making its incursions into this field. This is a circumstance of utmost importance in assessing the extent of the hold of Sanskrit on the society of this region. 2. Abbreviations in Sanskrit :
Abbreviations are an interesting facet of the use of a living language and are usually determined by pragmatic considerations. The fact that the space available in the pedastals was highly limited naturally led to the free use of abbreviations of various kinds and it is indeed interesting to see that the authors of these inscriptions have exercised their skill and imagination to compress and adjust the contents of their statements within the space available by resorting to abbreviations of all kinds suited to the context. In course of time, some of these abbreviations got more or less standardised by convention and became regular accepted usages in such inscriptions. The following are some very common instances :
Tito = mfa: / afar afar प्र०/प्रति = प्रतिष्ठितः । प्रतिष्ठितं/ प्रतिष्ठिता भा = भार्या पु = पुत्र
1 = ya of relatively less frequent occurrence are -
श्रे० = श्रेष्ठी श्रा = श्रावक सा० = सावक
