The Purana Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age c6.3

c6.3

i. As an illustration of the first peculiarity, the Mt and Vā¹, when naming the last Paurava king, end the line thus (p. 7)—*Nirāmitrāt tu (or ca) Kṣemakaḥ*, ‘after Nirāmitra was Kṣemaka’; where the *tu* or *ca* in the fifth syllable should be short but is long by position before *kṣ*. No one composing in Skt could end a śloka line with *Kṣemaka*, but its Pkt form *Khemaka* satisfies the metre perfectly. There can be no doubt therefore that this line was composed in Pkt originally, and that the Skt redactor restored the Pkt name to its Skt form and in so doing overlooked the fact that the change violated the metre. The fault was however noticed afterwards, because eVā corrects it by altering the half line to *bhavitā Kṣemakas tathā* (p. 7, note 71). Precisely similar is the mistake in the line that ends with *samā bhokṣyanti trimśatim*², where no difficulty would occur in Pkt since *trimśati* would drop its *r* there³.