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[Full title: Role of Desya element in Prakrit and Apabhramsha in general and in Pushpadanta鈥檚 works in particular]

[The role of Desya element in Prakrit & Apabhramsha-Observations on Desya and rare linguistic material found in Puspadanta] Role of Desya element in Pk and Apabhramsa vocabulary. As observed at the very outset Desya words formed a very important element of the Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan vocabulary The basis of the literary Prakrits was primarily the spoken dialects of different regions. They contained a core of words in familiar use which was not represented in Sanskrit As Prakrits came to be adopted more and more for literary purposes, this local and regional element of their vocabulary began to be felt more and more difficult of understanding.' As a result, there developed a need of compiling reference lists of such obscure words and along side with it there emerged a tendency to eschew such words and cultivate a more Sanskrit-like Prakrit But as Apabhramsa attained the status of a literary medium the situation was again altered. In virtue of the greater proximity of Apabhramsa to the spoken idioms more and more local and regional words found there way in the literary language Grierson and Jacobi have shed instructive light on these developments in Middle Indo-Aryan In his Linguistic Survey of India Grierson states that besides the cultivation of the literary Prakrits, there was under the initiative of the less literate people some culture of the local Pk speeches, too, in which, there appeared narrative poems contrived to suit the popular tastes As these narrative poems were intended for the general public, they borrowed freely from the forms of speech current in the locality, where each was composed In this way a work composed in Oudh would widely differ in its vocabulary and method of expression from one composed in Gujarat, though both of them were written in Prakrit The popular words known as 'Desya' or 'local' used in such Pk works had no literary authority and were not, as a rule, admitted into literary Prakrit. As the local speeches, from which these words were borrowed, 1. In the 9 th Century AD we find Kouhala, the author of the famous Pk katha Lilavai sounding a caution against the prolific use of Desi in the literary Pk (Lilavai, Stz 41) -

were short-lived and subject to quick changes and modifications, the narrative poems too, which admitted such vocables, became easily unintelligible due to due to the preponderance of the latter and required translation, if they were to be preserved and given some degree of permanence. Such a task, it is obvious, necessitated a compilation of the local words, as a result of which we find the Desikosa or the Desinamamala The local variations of Prakrit, rather the local speeches which showed the exuberance of local forms and idioms, were called Apabhramshas and they varied from place to place 1 Regarding the Pk katha Tarangavati of Padalipta 2 composed in about the 1 st cent A D., we have on record an observation of a later writer who has prepared a Pk abridgement of the same, to the effect that as Tarangavati was teeming with Desja words and other obscurities nobody understood or took interest in it. This means that numerous expressions of the language of Torangavati had become obsolete in the centuries that followed Regarding the literary Prakrit or works composed in it in the 5 th century A.D. and thereabout Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen observes- "Sanskrit forms the chief constituent of individual Prakrit dialects, especially of Maharastri of artificial poetry, such as Gaudavaho and Ravanavaho, that are composed according to the model of Sanskrit In them, therefore, the number of desi words is diminishing, while they are very significant in Jain Maharastri". (See Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen 搂 9) Jacobi points out the phenomenon that the number of Desi words (both Dest and Dhatvadesas) is conspicuously far greater in Apabhramsa, but comparatively less in the ordinary Prakrit. For illustrating it by concrete facts he refers to the Bhavisayattahaba which he has edited and mentions that it contains about 120 Desi'sabdas and 100 Dhalvadesas He then compares it with his other work-the Mabaras tri-Erzahlungen, wh ch absorbs more Dest words than any work of classical Pk and possesses only 59 Dests and 44 Dhatvadesas In the former work, be again affirms, the number of such words, which are foreign to Pk but excluded from the Desikosa, and yet maintain some contact with the NIA dialect is not less than 60, while such words in the Maharastri-Erzahlungen are only 20 These statistical figures, there is no denial of the fact, will clearly indicate the exuberance of the Desi vocables in Apabhramsa and its closer relationship with the dialects-which are the sources of such words 3 1. See The Linguistic Survey of India, vol I, p 123. 2. See quotation from Tarangalola, quoted above 3 See Introduction to Bb 搂 11, Journal of the Asiatic Society vol XXII, 1956, no 1, p 25 7

"It is more significant that the elements from other strata of speeches penetrated into the vocabulary of Mabarastri, which remained essentially Sanskritic in the subsequent period. Ho e appear first the Dhatvadesas and the Desis-the popular words for extensive use, whose preponderating majority, indeed, may be ultimately traced in the old Indian speech-but has sometimes, no easily recognisable prototype in the usual classical Sanskrit "1 As said by Jacobi the peculiarity of Apabhramsha lies in its vocabulary especially the Desi element and in the idiom and expressions which are more allied to NIA languages than to Sk Chatterji observes-". .. speech in both be justified in The increase in number of Onomatopoetics, as Indo-Aryan advances in its history, is noticeable. The Onomatopoetics, form a very characteristic element of Dravidian and Austric, and in this matter we shall assuming a vital influence of the non Aryan substrata "Echo words" are another contribution from Dravidian to New Indo-Aryan, and it can be well-assumed that it was coming into evidence in Middle Indo-Aryan "2 "Onomatopoetic formalions on a lavish scale are a characteristic of both NIA and Dravidian. Vedic is remarkably poor in Onomatopoetics, 89 We come down to Middle Indo-Aryan, and N'A the number and force of Onomatopoetics is on the increase 17 3 In Discussing the lexical material in old Gujarati Bhayani says" vocabulary we meet a host of words of obscure or unknown origin. This Desya element is present in 0 G in a far greater degree than in Apabhramsa Besides this the Onomatopoetic or Jingle element in the vocabulary strikingly draws our attention "4 Observations on Desya and rare linguistic material as found in Pospadanta In the light of the general observations given above regarding the role of Desya element 111 literary Prakrit and Apabhramsa , let us consider what are the broad implications of the data presented by us in the second section of the thesis. There we find that if we exclude from our consideration those elements of Apabhramsha vocabulary which, with more or less effort, can be derived from Sk,[1.e 1) Items only derivable from Sk, 2) Tadbhavas with specialised or changed meaning, 3) Items partly derivable from Sanskrit and 4) Se: Intro to Bhavisayattakaha of Dhanapala. 搂 12 Indo-Arvan and Hindi, p 92 1. 2 3 4 See "Language of Gujarat", Bharatiya Vidya vol VIII, pp 316-316, See Origin and Development of Bengali Language, p 175.

Items that have correspondents only in late Sk lexicons and similar sources] and examine the Desya words strictly so-called (Onomatopoetics, Foreign loan-words of Dravidian origin and words of Persian rest -Pure Dest words) the following facts emerge: origin and the 1. In all there are 710 words or items. Even if we make allowance for some difference of opinion about considering any particular item as Desya or otherwise and also for the greater extent 1 of the area of extraction it will be readily admitted that our number compares fairly well the numebr given by Jacobi in Bhavisayatta kaba (10 th cent.A.D)² 2. Out of these 710 words 134 are Onomatopoetic and 45 (41+4) are clearly identifiable (Foreign loans, words of Dravidian or Persian origin) 3. 331 are found in Hemacandra (Sidobabema & Desiramamala). 4 Among the Dravidian 27 are recorded by Hemacandra while 14 are not recorded by him. 5. 144 are not recorded in Paiasaddamahannavo 6 For 45 words we have not been able to give any parallel from other Pk and Apabhramsa texts. " 7. We find 340 words inherited in some form or other by N.I A. while for 370 words no correspondents could be cited from N.I A, languages like Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi or Konkani. Looking to the extent of the work and the number of Desya elements used or employed in it we find ourselves in agreement with what Jacobi bas observed regarding the composition of the vocabulary of Bb We can say and demonstrate by a casual glance over the glossary of words that more than nine-tenth of the vocables of literary Apabhramsa agree with those of the literary Pk and the same are presumably borrowed from the latter." (Jacobi, Introduction to Bh 搂 2) Taking this fact into consideration and contrasting it with the far larger percentage of words of non-sanskritic origin in NIA languages, we can conclude that literary Apabhramsa made use of Desya words to a limited degree as compared to the contemporary spoken dialects Secondly, though the vocabulary of literary Apabhramsa had by the time of 9 th Cent acquired a con siderably conventional pattern and pronounced standardisation, there was always some scope left for regional influences Only this fact would account for the extra Dravidian element in Puspadanta, who, as is well known, carried on his literary activity in a Kannada-speaking territory 8 1 Bh has 357 Kadavalas (22 Sandhis) while MP has 20,000 Kadavakas (102 Sandhis) 2 Gune, Intro to Bh p 3 But according to Gopani, the date of Bhavisayattakaha is later tban Nanapancamikaha 3 Premiji thought there is dearth of Kannada and Dravidian words in Puspadanta's works (Jain Sahitya aur Itihas, p 227) But obviously his was a casual impression, not based on any close study of the point

In fine, a word on the interpretation of the Desya words is not here out of place. A glance at some of the conflicting views on the spellings and especially on meanings of some of the Desya words in our data (eg. dodda- dodda, gomdala-gumdala, kuhani, kuhini etc, and meanings of words like ghamghala, cumbhala) will at once indicate the plight of Desya study in general Now that numerous Apabhramsa texts have been published, very rich M.I A. lexical data have become available And now it has become considerably easier to remove obscurities and uncertainties regarding the form and meaning of many Desya expressions and to verify the information of early authorities like Hemacandra like Hemacandra This is illustrated by a number of words in the present study wherein we have succeeded with the help of the light thrown by the context and parallels elsewhere to remove some earlier misunderstanding, conflict or ambiguity.' To any one who has worked on these lines with an Apabhramsa text, it will be quite obvious that a compilation of a Dictionary of Desya words aud expressions that are actually attested in Pk and Apabhramsa works, along w th origial citations, is an urgent task before the Middle Indo-Aryan scholarship. * * * * * l See especially discussion under the following words uccoli, cumbhala, ghara, tuppa, coppada, Eyallaa, mamdira, veyadiya etc. t