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'the language of Mahārāṣṭra' (marahaṭṭhayabhāsā) is found in a verse praising it in the course of a natural description in the Dharmo padeśamālā-vivaraṇa of Jayasimhasuri, composed in 858 A. D. in Jaina Maharaṣṭri. The expression marahaṭṭhaya-bhāsā appears in its Sanskrit form in Bhoja's Śṛngaraprakāśa, which tells us that certain small romances (kṣudrakatha), like the lost Gōrocana and Anang avati, belonging to a type known as Manthulli, are composed in Maharaṣṭra-bhāṣā or 'the language of Mahārāṣṭra'. This appellation seems to be earlier than the name Mabārāṣṭri popularised by writers like Viśvanatha3 and Märkandeya (fourteenth-sixteenth centuries).
INTRODUCTION
Vararuci's Prakṛtaprakāśa does not refer to Mahārāṣṭri except in the last chapter which is considered an interpolation. But the Subodhini commentary, which, like the Samjwant, omits the last three chapters dealing with Paiśaci, Magadhi and Šauraseni, starts with the remark that the language described in the work is Mahārāṣṭri. A citation from the Setubandha occurs in Bhamaha's commentary on Vararuci 1.14, where one of the examples pio tti is taken from Setu 15.9.
It may generally be said that the language of the Setubandha is in conformity with the Prakṛta described by Vararuci and Hemacandra except that in one respect, the change of t to d, Pravarasena tends to agree with Vararuci rather than Hemacandra as shown below. As an elaborate specimen of early Mahārāṣṭri, the Setubandha shows few deviations from the established norm; and we shall here confine ourselves to a few characteristic features and certain peculiar forms found
1 सललिय-पय- संचारा पयडिय-मयणा सुवण्ण - रयणेल्ला ।
मरहट्ठय- भासा कामिणी य अडवी य रेहंति ॥ p. 4. ( Singhī Jain Series)
2 Raghavan, Bhoja's Syngaraprakasa, p. 623.
3 Sahityadarpana, chap. 6 (bhāṣāvibhāga).
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