The Purana Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age c6.44

c6.44

The same fault occurs in places where metre was not at stake. Thus all three Purāṇas read *catvāriṃśat trayaḥ* *caira* as the first half of a line⁶, where *samās* or *varṣāṇi* is implied and *trayas* is wrong as regards both gender and case. CVā attempts to rectify the discord by reading *trayam*. Similarly in another passage the Mt has *samās trīṇy evam*, while the Vā and Bd read *samās tisra eva*⁷. It is impossible to suppose that these wrong expressions were composed originally in Skt, and they are intelligible as perfunctory Sanskritizations of Pkt expressions containing the numeral *tao*, or *tiṇṇi* which also is of all three genders⁸. Similarly we find the phrase *ṣaṣty-uttara-śata-trayam* used with *varṣāṇi* in the Bd and with *samāḥ* in the Bh⁹. Other instances are *saptaṣaṣṭis tu varṣāṇi*¹⁰, and *aṣṭāśītis tu varṣāṇi*¹¹, where the case is wrong; *ye cānye Mleccha-jātayaḥ*¹² which eVā has corrected to *yāś cānyā°*; and perhaps *divyābdāni*¹³ where the correct *divyābdās* was as easy as in the Bd.