Studies in Desya Prakrit

Author(s): H C Bhayani
Publisher: Kalikal Sarvagya Shri Hemchandracharya Navam Janmashatabdi Smruti Sanskar Shikshannidhi Ahmedabad

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and confusing orthographic variants. The textual problems and editorial difficulties have been well outlined by Pischel, who has accomplished the task of faithfully presenting all the textual variants from some seven MSS. of the DN.' and settling the text by and large. But as he has observed, in several cases he felt considerably handicapped due to the absence of any dependable criteria for selecting from among thie multiple spelling variants, and in rare cases he tried to seek some help from the New Indo-Aryan materials. This latter source of information, left practically untouched by Pischel, but considerably availed of by Sheth and Doshi, can be exploited much more fully now, firstly because of the lexicographical works like Turner's Nepali Dictionary and A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages, Mayrhofer's Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Worterbuch des Altindischen and, Burrow and Emeneau's Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, and secondly because of the further historical and comparative work in Indo-Aryan carried out after 1900 A.D. A second source of paramount importance now available to us is the considerable amount of Prakrit literature and almost the whole of Apabhramśa literature come to light since Pischel. Much of it remains yet to be explored for settling the forms of the words in DN.
There are, however, indications that the problem of settling the correct form of the Desi words was already considerably tangled when it was taken up and tackled ( fairly reasonably, we should say) by Hemacandra. Though in a number of cases Hemacandra did take notice of alternative forms, he could after all work under certain basic assumptions. Further he was bound by respect to tradition and laboured under considerable limitations of outlook and reference facilities as compared to a lexicographer of our
1. Ramanujaswami has collated three more MSS. for his
revised edition of the Pischel's work.