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INTRODUCTION
137
haelliya (p. 56, 7 11) and diņņellaya (p. 30, . 25)'. The latter form is of particular interest, because the Kuvalayamala represen's the Marahaṭṭhas as using the expressions dinṇalle and gahiyalle (given and taken) in their conversation at the market place of a big city, in a description in which the author gives specimens of the dialects spoken by the merchants from different parts of India2. Uddyotana's statement is corroborated by the fact that the form dinnalle said to be current among the Marahatthas appears in Old Marathi as dīnhalā, dinhale etc. in the same sense3. It is probable that dinnalle is a colloquial form of dinnellaya used in the Vasudevahindi; and the past participles in alla (often extended), which appear in literary Mahārāṣṭri, are probably based on the spoken language of Mahārāṣṭra.
The 2nd. pers. pl. of the Present indicative of the root as (ttha) found in Setu 3.3 was considered a very rare form by Pischel (498); but as pointed out by Alsdorf, it occurs more than forty times in the Vasudevahindi. The frequent use of this form which later became obsolete in Prakrit has been considered one of the signs of the antiquity of the Jaina romance"; and its occurrence in our poem seems to indicate that the form was still current when the Setubandha was written.
The absolutive in una, a prevailing characteristic of Maharāṣṭrī, is uniformly used in Setu except in some doubtful cases. 1 ' तस्स य इक्केण धम्ममइणा गिहिणा खेत्तनियत्तणं दिण्णेल्लयं' (i.e. दिण्णं ). KM has forms like जायल्लिय p.6, 1.2, मयल्लय p. 48, 1.14, मिलिएल्लय p. 55, 1.13, कयल्लिय p. 84, 7.14, धरियल्लओ 1.15 मारिएल्लय p. 112, 1.11, छाइएल्लय 1.10, जिमियल्लय P. 151,
1.19 etc.
2 दिण्णल्ले गहिल्ले उल्लविरे तत्थ मरहट्ठे KM, p. 153.
3 OMR, pp. 77, 88, 162; Upadhye, The Kuvalayamālā, Introd., Notes etc., p. 145. 1969.
4 See Alsdorf, The Vasudevahindi: A specimen of archaic Jain Maharaṣṭrī in BSOS, Vol. VIII, 1936.
5 Alsdorf assigns the work to a date much earlier than the sixth century A.D. 18
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