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INTRODUCTION
13
foot-notes. I have used anusvāra uniformly; for reasons explained elsewhere, I have added avagraha in some places; and for facility of understanding, in many places I have separated the members of a compound-expression by hyphens.
In the wide range of scribal errors certain tendencies are quite manifest : (i) No rigorous distinction between long and short vowels is maintained, but I have normalised them according to recognised rules of Sanskrit and Prākrit grammars. (ii) Usually the Present 3rd p. sing. termination i is shown long at the end of a pāda; but I have made it short in view of the grammatic needs, the reader being quite free to pronounce it according to metrical needs. (iii) At times we find a long vowel compensating the following double consonant, for instance, bhaddāsa for bhaddassa; at times an anusvāra is compensated by a long vowel, for instance, sigāra for simgāra; many a time an anusvāra and the doubling of the following consonant are freely interchanged, for instance, jimse for jisse and laakkurāņaṁ for laanikurānam. These points I have corrected in the light of the Sanskrit Chāyā and the illustrations recorded by PISCHEL in his Grammatik der Prākrit-Sprachen (Strassburg 1900). In a few typical cases I have given the actual readings in the foot-notes. (iv) Vowels a, i & u are mutually confounded in some cases; and at times a confusion is seen between i & hi, k & t, kh & gh, g & m, ch & jh, th & dh, and p & v. In some places intervocalic y is retained possibly under Sanskrit influence. Such cases I have treated in the light of what we know from Prākrit grammars; in those cases where I thought that difference of opinion was not unlikely I have noted the actual readings of the Ms. (v) The cases of the interchange between t and d I have cautiously
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