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Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
349
41
KANNADA WORDS IN
HEMACANDRA'S
DESINĀMAMALA
All the Prakrit grammarians divide thc Prakrit vocabulary into thrce classes: Tatsama, Tadbhava and Desya. They do not, in their treatment, touch the Tatsama words, but, concentrating their altention on Tadbhava words, lay down the various rules of phonetic change. As regards the Deśya words, they say that these are not related to Sanskrit words in accordance with the rules laid down in Prakrit grammars but were current in the language from time immemorial and have been freely used by poets in their compositions.
Hemacandra includes words of this Deśya class in his Desīnamamala' (DNM), a work of immense importance to the Prakrit student as well as to students of modern Indian languages. The Desināmamala, of course, is not an original work of Hemacandra's, but is based on the Desī lexicons of his predecessors, to whom he has often referred in it. But it is, as he says, certainly superior to those of his predecessors in several respects.?
Hemacandra, at the beginning of the work,' clearly states what he considers to be a Desi word. Words which are not treated in his grammar, which are not recognised in that sense in the Sanskrit Lexicons, which have changed their meaning in Prakril,
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