Studies in Desya Prakrit

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

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age. With our modern approach, technique and means, we are likely to regard or identify several separately listed items of the DN. as only variants of some other items listed elsewhere in the same work. It may be also possible for us to discern some general orthographic or phonological traits underlying the formal variation, which would have a wider significance for the history of Indo-Aryan.
The second aspect of the first problem is the ascertainment of the correct meanings of the listed items as given by Hemacandra. In the text af the DN. Hemacandra has given Prakrit meaning-equivalents or synonyms of the Deśya items. In his commentary we find Sanskrit equivalents for the same. In many a case these one-word renderings and paraphrases are bound to be ambiguous : words can have several meanings -- they can be homonymous, and one cannot tell which of these is meant in a particular case, is there are no restrictive indications. To guard against this circumstance, Hemacandra has provided illustrative stanzas. The devised actual-language context demonstrated the use of the recorded items, and made it clear which of the several meanings of the paraphrase-word was relevant. Unfortunately Ramanujaswami seems to have ignored these illustrative stanzas. As a consequence he has been forced to make arbitrary choice in ambiguous cases and, inevitably, on a number of occasions it turns out to be the wrong choice. So his English renderings in the alphabetical glossary given at the end of the DN. text contain numerous errors. Sheth and, to a greater extent, Doshi have properly consulted the illustrative stanzas and hence their interpretations are free from errors on this account. Doshi has regularly given Gujarati translation of the illustrative stanzas, some of which are considerably tough or obscure and must have proved fairly taxing. Pischel, even while condemning (rather unfairly ) these illustrative verses as “either void of all sense, or of an incredible stupidity', was quite conscious of