Studies in Jainology Prakrit Literature and Languages

Author(s): B K Khadabadi
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 21

Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
Now from the life of Buddha and the Pali canon, we learn that Buddha and Mahavira, departing from the instructional path of the Vedic priestly class, practised their preaching and teaching in thc language of the common people almost in the same region and in the same period. Hence naturally the modium of instruction of both of them was more or less the same." But the Pali canon tells us that Buddha's medium of teaching was Māgadhi. How to account for this anomaly? It is in the fitness of things and just natural that Mahāvīra and Buddha preached and taught the masses more or less in the same leading popular language of Magadha which accomodated different features of other dialects spoken in the area of their religious activities. And this accomodative leading popular language had its hold on the hall of Magadha area, 18 with Rajagrha as the representing centre, and hence, the name Ardhamagadhi might have been current, among the Ganadharas and the community of 14,000 recluses following Mahavira, in his life time itsell, or a little later; and further it might have been passed on to the redacted canon and from there to other later scholars who might have had one cyc on the tradition too.
As regards the second half of the problem, viz., is the Ardhamagadhi, the language of the present canon, the same as the Ardhamāgadhĩ, the medium of Malāvīra's teaching, the it can be said that it is not the same and it cannot be the same. We should bear in mind one fact that Mahavira's medium was spoken Ardhamāgadhi and the language of the canon is literary Ardhamāgadhi. It is an established linguistic principle that language changes from place to place and from time to time. We know that Mahavira's teachings were laughi, composed and passed on by the Ganadhares. Hence thc Ardhamagadhi of the canon, which was finally redacted and put to writing one thousand years after Mahavira's Nirvana, must have acquired, in such long course, several linguistic changes!. Moreover it is not the same type of language in all the Angas and, at times, in the same Anga. It is possibly for these reasons Hemachandra called it Arsa.20 Bul