Studies in Desya Prakrit

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

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their exegetical value. Apart from wrong interpretations of ambiguous Sanskrit glosses, Ramanujaswami's English renderings are also in numerous places vague, imprecise or casual. For the wider problem of the authentication of the meanings we have of course to fall back upon the same two means as mentioned before, viz, the Prakrit and Apabhramsa literatures and the New Indo-Aryan languages.
And again for tackling the second problem of settling the source and derivation of the Deśya words, the same two sources are to be utilized, besides the important work done in the field of historical and comparative Indo-Aryan and Dravidian lexicography, which has been already mentioned. Studies of early Prakrit and Apabhramśa texts from the exclusive point of view of the Deśya material contained in them would help us much in this direction, but unfortunately hardly any systematic attempts have been made so far. One important contribution in this subject is Mrs. R. Shriyan's 'A critical study of the Deśya and rare words from Puspadanta's Mahāpurāņa and his other Apabbramsa works' (1962, unpublished as yet). This Bombay University Ph.D. thesis, prepared under my guidance, deals with more
n fourteen hundred items, collecting information from various sources and discussing meaning and origin in numreous cases. Obviously many such comparative and critical studies are required for checking up the DN. and the lost compilations it drew upon. In the present effort, my immediats aim being to give some idea as to how the problem is to be tackled, I have drawn upon only a few Apabhramśa texts in an illustrative manner.
2. This statement was made in 1965. Since then the book is
published. For a revised statement of this point vide Introduction,