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A NOTE ON DICTIONARY MAKING IN PRAKRT
Jayanti Tripathy
Unlike Sanskrit the tradition of Dictionary making in Prakrt is very insignificant and the material is definitely scanty. The commentrial literature on the Ardhamāgadhi canon and post-canonical works offen cite passages which appear like 'Kosas' of the traditional type. However those passages are not 'kosa' in the traditional sense of the term. In the earliest works in Ardhamăgadhi and Pro-canonical works in Jain Saurasent where such passages occure, are due to the tradition of these works to explain the texts in a peculiar manner. It is significant to note that various devices were adopted to elucidat the meaning particularly in the case of the sacred text. And one of such devices is called egattas i.e. giving words all of which have the same meaning. The idea behind this device is to classify the concept which underlies a word more than its exact sense, and are built on a very loose sense of synonyms and a collection of words is put together to include as many aspects of the concepts as possible. The beginning of each chapter of the late cononical book Panhava gara nai incorporates many such passages. In the very first chapter we come across the word pānivaha and its 30 names like Pånivaham, ummuland sarirão, avisambho, hissavihimsā, akiccam ghayanā, marand vahana uddhavanā, tivāyanā, arambha-samārambho etc., called gonnāni. The Nijjutti on the suya gada gives purely phonetic variants of its name as : tassa ya imāni nămāni suttagadań, suttakadań, sữyagadarn ceva gonnāi.
It is true that such passages are very useful but they cannot be called Kosas or excerpts from kośas in the usual sense of the term. Kośas in the traditional sense as it is understood are only two in prakst namely, Dhanapala's Päiyalacchi nāmamālā and Rayaņavali of Hemacapdra.
Here we propose to discuss the principles adopted in those two košas in the present paper. Let us take for discussion the First Koga of Prakst first. Before going to discuss the principles etc. it will oot be out of place to put on record the personal history of Dhanapala and the content of Paiyalacchi namamāla. .
I. Dhanapala, the author of Pāiyalacchi nāmomäla was the son Tulsi.Prajña, Ladnun: Vol. 23 No. 3
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