Prolegomena to the analysis of deśī words in Hemacandra’s Deśīnāmamālā

Authors

  • Andrea Drocco Ca' Foscari University of Venice

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to offer the necessary theoretical and methodological considerations for undertaking the analysis of the typology of the deśī class of Prakrit words starting from Hemacandra’s Deśīnāmamālā, the most important lexicon, and almost the sole one, dealing with these specific words. The issues concerned the deśī words in Prakrit, as well as tatsama and tadbhava words, will be illustrated and analysed beginning with offering a review of the various scholars’ position on this topic. At the same time, and this is the main goal of the paper, the typology of deśī words will be investigated, this in order to understand how the heterogeneity of this specific class of Prakrit words is constructed. In this manner, we will have the opportunity to see that the scope of the tripartite classification of Prakrit words in tatsama, tadbhava and deśī is to give a tool in the hands of Indian medieval authors for comparing/understanding and/or for teaching the words used in Prakrit by means of Sanskrit words. Thanks to the proposed analysis, we will have a clearer idea of what Prakrit really was and how the perspective on considering it changed at the beginning of the first millennium in India.

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Author Biography

Andrea Drocco, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

Andrea Drocco is Associate professor in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His main field of investigation is Indo-Aryan linguistics, with particular reference to the diachronic change of some syntactic and morphosyntactic peculiarities of Hindī developed since the 16th century. At the same time, he has also devoted attention to some aspects of the Indian lexicon in its historical evolution and to the Prakrit grammatical tradition. He is currently dealing with the history of the Hindī language through the texts that most represent the diachronic evolution of that language, placing special emphasis on the analysis of its standardization process that occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Andrea can be contacted at: andrea.drocco@unive.it

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Published

2025-01-20

Issue

Vol. 28 No. 2 (2024): Kervan 28/2

Section

Articles

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