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श्रमण / अप्रैल-जून/ १९९६
The position of the sacred Jaina texts is different. Had it been like that of the Vedas there would not have been the problem of variants faced by the learned author today.
But inspite of what has been said above the effort on the part of the author is wonderful and as such highly commendable. In order to satisfy the curiosity and a long standing need of the lovers of Jaina literature and maintain the editorial discipline, the direction shown by Dr. Chandra is an eye opener. The curiosity of all of us is there to reach as near as possible to the sayings of the Lord Tirthankara if not the exact words which he uttered with his lotus like mouth.
११८
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This wonderful book under review comprises two sections. Section I contains the case study of the variants of a few Ardhamāgadhi words from the Acaranga Pt. I. The author has restricted his study to the following words :
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यथा, तथा प्रवेदितम् एकदा, एक:, एके, एकेषाम्, औपपादिक, औपपातिक, लोक, लोके and क्षेत्रज्ञ: ।
Each word has been shown in the tables with its numerous variants as found in different printed editions of palm-leaf manuscripts and paper manuscripts. Seven tables have been displayed in this sections. Section II contains the study of the variants from Acārānga, Sūtrakṛtānga, Riṣibhāṣitāni, Uttarādhyayana, Daśavaikālika Sutra, Cürnis and Samskṛta commmentaries.
It is a critical and comparative study of the variants based on the sound principles of linguistics. The variants as given above have been selected from the text of the Ãcārānga Pt. I ( M. J. U. edition, 1977) and compared with that of texual readings available in the various manuscripts (palm-leaf & paper manuscripts). After analysing the old Ardhamagadhi forms of Samskrita and
the author concluds his findings as follows:
The study of variants of these two words reveals that with the passage of time and the evolutionary trend of the Prakṛt younger and new forms like Jahā and Taha became popular and they replaced For Private & Personal Use Only
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