Critical Discourse in Gujarati/Introduction essay: Difference between revisions

<center>  '''Gujarati-ness of Critical Discourse of over Ten Centuries.''' </center>  

<center>  '''(a)''' </center>                                                                 

Umashankar Joshi often pointed out that Gujarati language has a special pronoun, AapaNe, a unique form of the first-person plural, that neither English nor other Indian languages have. ‘We’, ‘Hum’ etc. indicate the plural of ‘I’, but do not quite specify what they include: English ‘We’ has many hues: ‘We’ could either include ‘You’ or exclude ‘You’. (Consider ‘We stand united against You or Them’.) Again, ‘We’ is used as self-identification of the Powerful Individual or Institution.  Gujarati first person plural ‘AapaNe’ is inclusive of both the plurals, of ‘I’ and of ‘Thou’. That plurality and inclusiveness in that Gujarati pronoun represents the best in Gujarati culture. And, indeed, it points out to the best in Indian culture and in culture as such, anywhere. It was this quality that illuminated creative and critical works of Gujarati authors from Narasimha Maheta to Mohandas Gandhi and, hopefully, then on.

In fact, it goes back a good three centuries before Narasimha, all the way to the Apabhramsha stage of Gujarati language, in Gurjara Apabramsha as described by Hemachandra in the 12th century. In one of his well-known anushasana trilogy, namely in his Kavyanushasana, Hemachadra holds that Mahakavya could be written not only in Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhamsha languages (as per the long older convention) but also in what he called ‘Bhuta Bhasha’. Two of younger monks from amongst his or his fellow monk’s pupils, namely Vajrasen and Shalibhadra, began the practice of writing poetry in the local, regional language that was to acquire the name of Gujarati a little later. When Gujarati became a language of literature, it added to the three traditional languages of literature, it did not banish them. ‘Sarva bhasha parinata jaini vak’, ‘language of the Jina, which is capable of resulting into all languages [of humans, animals, plants]’, is how Hemachandra describes language of the Tirthankara.