________________
LINGUISTC PECULIARITIES OF LILAVATI-SARAL
OF JINARATNA
Jinaratna's scholarly knowledge of Sanskrit classics, lexicons and grammars is revealed in his free choice of words, farms, and expressions irrespective of their being standard, substandard, obsolete, in vogue, rare or customary. As has been pointed out further bellow, a strong undercurrent of the spoken dialect of the day can be detected in the numerous idioms, proverbs, and lexical usages of the Lilāvati-kathā-sāra (LS.) which are frequently nonSanskritic and which have Late Middle Indo-Aryan or Early New-Indo-Aryan parallels.
LINGUISTIC PECULIARITIES
The Sanskrit of LS. is not the Standard Classical Sanskrit, but a type of Mixed Sanskrit usually called Jain Sanskrit. Several scholars including Bloomfield, Upadhye and Sandesara have so far offered their studies of Jain Sanskrit with regard to a particular text or group of texts.2 Great linguistic diviersity has been a patent characteristic of India since the earliest time. Due to development of regional dialects during the Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan periods on the one hand, and concurrent literary use of Sanskrit, Prakṣits and Apabhramśa on the other, a highly complicated picture of linguistic contacts and convergences has characterized the middle and modern stages of Indo-Aryan.
| Edited by H. C. Bhayani, 1983. 2 For a brief account of the work so far done and some important
references see Bhayani H. C., Introduction in Gujarati) to Pancafati Prabandha sambandha (also called PrabandhaPancasati), ed. by Mrgendra Muni, 1968, pp. 7-9.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
