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A STUDY OF THE GUJARATI LANGUAGI
The margins are marked by ordinary black lines on both sides. There is a space of 1.5" sq. left in the middle. The ms. is written on a thick but inferior paper. There are few marginal corrections, probably by a later hand, and no punctuation marks above the line. Use of padimātra is very rare.
The ms. begins with :- Arham. Sri Gautamasvamine na mab. Suräsurädhisamahiśanamyam.........etc., and ends with : dubham bhavatu. śubham astu. lekha kavācaka suśrāvakavargasya. anuştubham sahastrāņi sapta tvaksarasain khyayā, jñeyāni vrttāv atra sadhikāni manisibhih. 1.
The last line remains unfinished, and a later hand has added other lines (see appendix ), the name of the gaccha to which the scribe belonged is cleverly erased by a later hand, and re-written as . Kharatara gacchiya'. Perhaps the last line contained the name of the scribe.
The ms., though inferior as regards its descent is concerned, is carefully copied, and has preserved some good readings, though in many cases we find the text modified by dialectal influence -- in space and time - and therein lies the importance of the ms.
3. Orthography
3.1. These mss. are written in a popular spoken language about a popular topic. Four mss., three of which are written during first eight years of the composition of the text, the fourth, a hundred years later, all at the same place, create a problem of their own. Varying scribal habits, dialectal differences and the influence of a standard language are the principal factors influencing the orthography of our text
3.2. There are two main sources of variants Many of them are, no doubt, the result of orthographic errors-mistakes of the scribes - But when we find certain cases repeated again and again in a consistent way, we cannot impute those errors to the scribes only, they must have their basis in the existing conditions of the language. More so when we are dealing with a text which is written in a popular current language, (for a similar case regarding Pk. mss. see Leumann Av. introduction)
Of our mss. P. provides a good example of scribal peculiarities. It is copied in 1509 v. s. and therefore, later than the other three, though copied at the same town. Its peculiarities are:
It writes --tau post pos. for-itau', thakau, thakā post pos. for thi-, and generally it has huau, hua, for huyau, huyā Add to this, stray variants like jesi for jisi?, thāhară for tāhara, which would, on the whole, suggest that the scribe of the P hails from a different dialectal area. Dialectal differences already appear in the literature of the Pre-Gujarati period, i. e. in the Ap. works, as reflections of dialectal differences in the desabhāsa, see Jacobi BH p. (8), and in the OWR texts also, dialectal differences are evident (Turner GP p. 333).
Bh. once reads thāharau for tāharau, which is again an important indication of early development of this form, though foreign to the language of the text.
L. has often a y-glide in forms like isau/isyau, karisii/karisyai, and it also writes cyāri for ciyāri.
3.3. In these cases, dialectal differences can be ascribed to particular scribes, because of the relative frequency of particular readings. But there is another group of variations which is not peculiar to any scribe or ms. but occurs intermittently in all the
1. P is su rigorous in this matter, that at $ 85 it alters a correct reading karai tau to kara-tau; also note the reading at $ 113
2. The text-history ot this reading leaves no doubt that it is not a scribal error. Bomits it, BH has only si and adds ji- in the margin, wbile Phas jesi. What is certain is that a conjunctive particle was needed and the scribe of the P wrote the one which he used.
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