Sambodhi 1978 Vol 07

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 88

H. C. Bhayani
the status distinction. According to Bhoja, the Avantya and Latiya varieties of Apabhramśa were superior, the Abhira and Gurjara were middling and the Kāshmira and Eastern were inferior. The Sahityamimāṁsā has adopted this scheme.
We have at present hardly any materials to ascertain the grammatical basis that distinguished the different varieties of literary Apabhramsa. It seems likely that the language of the original PR. had characteristics due to which it might be described as the prior form of what is called by scholars Old Western Rajasthani. This question, however. of the language of the original PR. deserves separate and independent discussion. What is most significant for our purpose here is th: fact that by the time of the Sahityamīmāṁsa PR had achieved such recognition and status that it could be cited in works on poetics.
3. This newly discovered citation from PR, provides further evidence for calling into question the validity of Gupta's view that the text of PR. as preserved in the Dharanoja MS. is textually nearest to the original PR. and that no verse that is not found in that MS. belonged to the original PR. And because this view forms the basis of Gupta's reconstructed text, of the original' PR. the latter also requires to be reexamined.
. Neither of the two verses of Canda cited in the Purätangprabandhasamgraha finds s place in Gupta's reconstructed text, eventhough one of them is found in all the recensions of PR. and the other in the Larger and Largest recensions. Similary the verse cited in the Sahityamīmāṁsā is found in all the recensions of PR. except the shortest one, but it also would count as a later interpolation according to Gupta's criteria. Thus when the earliest known citations from PR. are to be excluded from its reconstructed original, the principles set up for that reconstruction require to be critically reconsidered. A fresh effort is called for to recover, by using sound principles of reconstruction, the original Rāsau in Lātiya Apabbraṁsa that was known to the authors of the Sahityamīmāṁså and the Purātana-prabandhasaṁgraha.
(4) A verse closely resembling the PR. citation in the Sahityamimamså, occürs in Ratnamandiraganin's Upadeśataramgiņio (beginning of the 16th Cent. A. D). It was composed by the poet Ama, who is said to have recited it in praise of Jayasimha Siddharāja, the Caulukya ruler of Gujarat (first half of the 12th cent. A. D.), at the latter's court. The verse is as follows:
डरि गइंद डगमगिअ चंद-कर मिलिय दिवायर । fesz fe fre (?3) #6 aa sifqz a
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