Prolegomena to Prakritica et Jainica

Author(s): Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Asiatic Society

Page 20

BANERJEE : ORIGIN OF PRAKRIT
arrives at the very opposite stand-point maintained by Vakpatirāja and Namisādhu and speaks of the speech of Jina "as not artificial, as sweet-worded and as transformed into all other speeches."l' In his Deśināmamālā which was written after his grammar and the Kāvyānusasana" he maintains the same view. In the opening stanza of the Deśīnāmamālā he salutes the speech of Jina (i.e., Ardhamāgadhi Prāksta) as the origin of all other speeches. In support of his view that Ardhamāgadhi has developed into all other speeches, in the Commentary on it he quotes a stanza already quoted in the Kāvyānusāsana—“The speech of Jina was understood by the Gods as divine speech, by men as human speech, by Savaras as Săvarī speech and by the brutes as their own speech.” It is also possible Hemacandra as a pious Jaina held this view even when he wrote his grammar in which, however, he adopted the stand-point of Sanskrit origin of Prakrit for convenience of treatment.
Indian writers on Prakrit Grammar and Lexicography and Rhetoric adopt a threefold classification of Prakrit. Though they employ slightly different phraseology to express these classes the following names are generally accepted, viz., (1) Tatsama, (2) Tadbhava, (3) Deśi.
This classification is evidently based on the orthodox 10. marraskIGUCI Hrefiforenferiti
ForTefturat taff arre ll Kavyānušāsana, p. 1., sl. 1. In the Commentary on it Hemacandra seems to follow Namisādhu in regarding Prakrit to be ‘of a homogeneous character like rain falling from the clouds.' (996841 Ft
भगवतोद्धमागधीभाषा वारिदविमुक्तवारिवदाश्रयानुरूपतया परिणमति।) 11. Mention is made of Siddha Hemacandra and
Kavyānušāsana in Desināmamala, I. 3. Com. 12. The equivalent terms for the three classes are: (1) Tatsama,
Samskrtasama, Tattulya, Samānasabda; (2) Tadbhava, Samskrtabhava, Samskrtayoni, Tajja, Vibhraşta; (3) Deśl, Desiprasiddha, Desimata; for full reference see Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen, Strassburg (1900), 8 8.