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A Study of the Gujarati Language in the 14th Century
1. The text and its significance
The wealth of documentary evidence for the history of the Gujarati Language is made well known by Sir George Grierson's remark in the Linguistic Survey of India, We have thus a complete chain of evidence as to the growth of the Gujarati language from the earliest times...... No single step is wanting. The line is complete for nearly four thousand years (Vol. ix. part ii, p. 327 ). But at the same time the paucity of critical editions of early Gujarati is also remarkable. Much material still lies in Gujarati mss. and marginal glosses of Pk. mss. The earliest specimens of the Gujarati language date from 1330 V.S. There are four fragmentary prose pieces (in all, less than 200 lines) from 1330 to 1369 V.S., while this work is a detailed document containing popular narratives, written in 1411 V. S. This work is, not only the earliest detailed document of Gujarati, but one of the earliest in the New Indo-Aryan languages.
Şa dāvaśyaka yrtti was composed at Aņa hilla pattana, now Patan, then the seat of Gujarati learning and the capital of the famous Solamki dynasty. It is a Gujarati commentary on Şa dāvaśyaka, composed by Taruna prabha, pupil of Jinacamdrasūri of the kharatara gaccha. The praśasti at the end of the work says that it was composed under the rule of Emperor Pirojasäha (Firoz Tugha lag ).
There are four mss. available, of which one from the Bikaner collection is written in 1412 V. S.; the other three are from the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (not dated ), the Limbdi (1419 V.S.) and the Patan (1503 V.S ) collections.
Sa dāvaśyaka is an important Jain text, both for monks and for laymen. It includes important feature of the Avaśyaka literature in its stock of stories which are narrated to illustrate the power of various vows to be observed by Jains. The stories were told from generation to generation in Jain temples and houses. Dry descriptions of virtues and vices were made palatable by introducing stories in a popular medium. These thirty-one popular stories, are therefore, the nearest approximation to the spoken Gujarati of the period under examination.
It is an important phenomenon that our best ms. is written just one year after the composition of the text. At the same time, the other two, the BORI and the Limbdi mss. are written between 1411-1419 V.S., thus, of the four mss. available, three are written during the first ten years succeeding the composition of the text, evidence which cannot be disregarded in the restoration of the text. So I have edited the text eclectically. By presenting the internal evidence I have been able to show the probable course of texttransmission, which has helped me judge the authenticity of various readings, and to fix the date of the BORI ms.
2. Description of the Mss. The following Mss. have been used in preparing the text :
(i) B. A paper ms. from Bikaner, Māhima-Bhakti Bhandar. This is a wellpreserved ms. in good handwriting. It has 308 folios, measuring 9" x 3", margin of half inch on right and left, a little less on top and bottom; ten lines to a page till folios 199, and 9 lines thereafter. The marginal space does not vary, and the whole ms. is by one hand. It has 40 letters to a line, except lines 3, 4, 5, 6, which have an average of 35 letters due to the space left in the middle.
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