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Jaina Kosa Literature
Dr. Ashok Kumar Singh*
Nature & Scope
Kośa, also spelled as Kosa, means in literary sense a dictionary, lexicon or a poetical collection, of sentence. The meaning of the Kośa brings under its fold lexicons, encyclopaedia, concordance, glossary, gazetteer, thesaurus and index. Its meaning collection of sentences and poetical collections makes it considerably broad-based, especially in the context of Ancient Indian literature. A large number of texts have come out in form of Nāmamālā, Nāmamālākośa, Nāmamālikā (glossary), Nighanţa, Nighanti, Nighanțuka (collection of word, Vocabulary), Samuccaya (collection), Sangraha (collection), Ratnamālā (collection of various works) and Ratnākara. If works ending with above-mentioned titles are included in this section, the number of works will fairly increase because collections of Subhāṣitas (anthologies), Kathāgranthas (narrative literature) and stotras have to be treated herein. Hence, those collections dealing with narratives etc. have to be dealt in their respective sections.
Classification of Kośas (Dictionaries):
Strictly speaking, the compiling of dictionaries, termed lexicography, is regarded as a branch of applied linguistics. The study of words, their meanings, forms, derivations and development is called lexicon. These vary widely in size, comprehensiveness, purpose and quality. These may be sorted out into several categories, not necessarily mutually exclusive, such as, etymological, technical, specialised, dialect, bilingual and polyglot, and general purpose. A number of dictionaries are devoted to etymology. Bilingual works are generally of this sort. A number of polyglot lexicons are also available, containing terms pertaining to special field in several languages. Technical and special lexicons include of terms used in Philosophy, Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology etc. The general-purpose dictionary is often encyclopaedic. * Senior Lecturer, Parshwanath Vidyapeeth, Varanasi.
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