________________
118
INTRODUCTION
principal doctrines of Mahavira as the happy name of 'Sanmati' which suggests the name of Mahā vira. This new reference in Dhanañjaya-Nama-Mala thus satisfactorily accounted for the stray mention of the word 'Sanmati' in some of the manuscripts and we finally settled upon and adopted this better word Sanmati.
A question here arises as to why this name Sammati came to be substituted for the right word Sanmati. The answer is obvious. The writer originally composed his work in Prakṛta; naturally the designation of the work was also given in Prakṛta dialect. Now according to the rules of the changes of Samskṛta words into Prakṛta, the word Sanmati was changed into Sammai in Prākṛta. As long as this name was current in its original Prakṛta nothing was a miss ; but when, later on, the fashion of restoring Prakṛta words to their original Samskṛta forms came in vogue, the word Sammai was changed to its original Samskṛta form Sammati through mistake, but then this mistake instead of of being rectified, persisted not only in speech but also in writing. Later on, authors, writing in Samskṛta inadvertantly retained this wrong word Sammati and this very word became a current coin in all later manuscripts. Sometimes, however, some scribe casually wrote the correct word 'Sanmati' in one and the same manuscript, but mostly the wrong word came to be retained in the manuscripts by those who did not know that the word Sanmati in Samskṛta is an epithet of Mahāvira. In the Digambara sect, the name Sanmati as given to Lord Mahavira is current from ancient times
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
