Part 4.2 - Desi Lexicographers before Hemachandra

[Full title: The nature and character of Deshya element (2): Desi Lexicographers before Hemachandra]

Let us examine from the observations and performance of ancient lexicographers what was the conception of dest And here the greatest contribution to the elucidation of the problem has been made by Hemacandra, whose work comes as a climax to the whole series of the efforts of dest lexicographers. But prior that we may gather whatever is known about the activity in the field of desi preceding Hemacandra Though no collection of desis before Hemacandra is now available to us except the Paralacchinamamala of Dhanapala (which anyway offers a mixed fare of Tadbhavas and Dests), Hemacandra has mentioned or cited several desi works or desikaras that preceded him By Hemachandra's time dest was of long standing use Hemacandra mentions or cites as authority the following lexicons or lexicographers in his Desinamamala. (1) Abhimanacihna (I, 144, VI, 93 etc.) (2) Avantisundari (I, 81; I, 157) (3) Devaraja (VI, 58, V, 72) (4) Dhanapala (I, 141, III, 22 etc ) This Dhanapala appears to be different from Dhanapala, the author of Paralacchinamamala as none of the references given in the Deshinamamala are traced to that work.1 (5) Drona (I 18, I, 50 etc ) (6) Gopala (I, 25, I, 31 etc.) (7) Rahulaka (IV, 4) (8) Samba (II, 48 ) (9) Silanka (II, 20; VI, 96 ect ) (10) Satavahana (III, 41, V, 11 etc.) (11) Padaliptacarya (I, 2) I See Vaidya, P. L, 'Observations on Hemacandra's D., A B.O R. I., Vol III, p 65,

. 25° Hemacandra refers to Padalipta' as an authority' on 'dest, who hadwritten a Desisastra and quotes often from the rest of the above-mentioned authors. The works of the above mentioned authors have, not come down to us m however, As stated above Patalacchinamamala of Dhanapala (973 A. D) is the only pre-Hemacandra work in the field of Desi that has come down to us. Dhanapala calls his work a 'Namamala' in stz: 1 and in stz. 278 he designates it as Desi But the real Dest words given by Dhanapala are very few as compared with other tadbhava words given by him. He seems to have denoted by the term Desi a type of Prakrit or all the words of Prakrit dialects which are the Desya or vernacular languages of the time He has given groups of synonymous expressions in his work As Dhanapala's work is mainly a Patanamamala ( a Pk lexicon ) and as such he has ample scope to include any number of tadbhavas, his work differs qualitatively from the Desinamamala of Hemachandra. Regarding, Paialacchinamamala. Buhler observes, the Desis constitute only, a quarter of the words of the lexicon, all others are either iatsamas or tadbhavas." (See · Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen § 35 ) " > Now, let us examine the real character of Desi from our point of view as defined by Hemacaudra and presented by him.