2023-03-16 06:44:17 by ambuda-bot
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I. Introduction.
11
I have noted in the text is that
before a vowel is changed
to
instead of loosing simply its ; see stories 3, 11, 13
(twice), 29. But firstly, this sandhi also occurs in other texts,
and secondly, it may go back to some copyist, and not to the
author himself. For old as our MS is, it is, as stated above,
extremely faulty and was copied from an original containing cor-
rections and glosses.
Hence it is clear that the author knew Sanskrit well. If his
style is extremely simple, this is the very thing we should expect.
For firstly, it would be contrary to all good taste to narrate
anecdotes in kavya style, and secondly, it must have been his
aim to give his booklet as wide a circulation as possible; see above,
P. 6 f.
He neither wrote it for the court, nor for the scholars,
but for the general reader who, of course, was not able to under-
stand without difficulty elaborate texts containing all the ornaments
of Sanskrit court poetry, and rare words the use of which was
intended to show the respective authors' intimate knowledge of the
Shastras, and especially of the Koshas. Our author wrote for a
public which, if it studied at all, studied books like the Mugdha-
vabodhamauktika. In his days, easy Sanskrit texts of interesting
purport were sure to find a wide circulation among the public.
This is quite sure from the mere fact of the existence of the huge
Jain
literature composed in Sanskrit. The Jain monks
would have been fools, had they not composed their propaganda
books in a language generally understood. The more a writer,
whether in India or elsewhere, wishes to write popularly, the more
will he, though using the literary language of his country, insert
popular words, or adaptations from the popular language. Nobody
ever found fault with Rosegger, Charles Dickens, Alphonse Daudet,
and even with the great latinists Heinrich Bebel and Nicodemus
Frischlin, when they freely did so; and nobody ever doubted that
these and many other men were thoroughly conversant with the
languages they wrote, and that they were excellent writers. It is
therefore quite unscientific to object the popular Shvetambar Sanskrit
authors' using the same right as all the popular writers of all
times and of all nations, and to see bad Sanskrit, where there
is only colloquial and popular Sanskrit which, of
course, deserves the same study as the court Sans-
krit of the Kavis.
Theft contains a great many popular words
explained in our glossary and in our notes on the text.
for a
The author's home. From some of these words
great part of them is common to Gujarati, Hindi, and Marathi —,
but especially from the popular sentences and stanzas contained in
our text it is clear that the author of the Bhd. was a native of
Gujarat.
11
I have noted in the text is that
before a vowel is changed
to
instead of loosing simply its ; see stories 3, 11, 13
(twice), 29. But firstly, this sandhi also occurs in other texts,
and secondly, it may go back to some copyist, and not to the
author himself. For old as our MS is, it is, as stated above,
extremely faulty and was copied from an original containing cor-
rections and glosses.
Hence it is clear that the author knew Sanskrit well. If his
style is extremely simple, this is the very thing we should expect.
For firstly, it would be contrary to all good taste to narrate
anecdotes in kavya style, and secondly, it must have been his
aim to give his booklet as wide a circulation as possible; see above,
P. 6 f.
He neither wrote it for the court, nor for the scholars,
but for the general reader who, of course, was not able to under-
stand without difficulty elaborate texts containing all the ornaments
of Sanskrit court poetry, and rare words the use of which was
intended to show the respective authors' intimate knowledge of the
Shastras, and especially of the Koshas. Our author wrote for a
public which, if it studied at all, studied books like the Mugdha-
vabodhamauktika. In his days, easy Sanskrit texts of interesting
purport were sure to find a wide circulation among the public.
This is quite sure from the mere fact of the existence of the huge
Jain
literature composed in Sanskrit. The Jain monks
would have been fools, had they not composed their propaganda
books in a language generally understood. The more a writer,
whether in India or elsewhere, wishes to write popularly, the more
will he, though using the literary language of his country, insert
popular words, or adaptations from the popular language. Nobody
ever found fault with Rosegger, Charles Dickens, Alphonse Daudet,
and even with the great latinists Heinrich Bebel and Nicodemus
Frischlin, when they freely did so; and nobody ever doubted that
these and many other men were thoroughly conversant with the
languages they wrote, and that they were excellent writers. It is
therefore quite unscientific to object the popular Shvetambar Sanskrit
authors' using the same right as all the popular writers of all
times and of all nations, and to see bad Sanskrit, where there
is only colloquial and popular Sanskrit which, of
course, deserves the same study as the court Sans-
krit of the Kavis.
Theft contains a great many popular words
explained in our glossary and in our notes on the text.
for a
The author's home. From some of these words
great part of them is common to Gujarati, Hindi, and Marathi —,
but especially from the popular sentences and stanzas contained in
our text it is clear that the author of the Bhd. was a native of
Gujarat.