The Purana Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age c6.71

c6.71

One cannot imagine that these verses were composed originally either in Skt or in Pkt with so many expletives, when the authors could easily have improved their verses by employing appropriate words denoting 'reign' or 'exist' or 'relationship'. No one composing in Skt would mar his verse and proclaim his literary poverty by such shifts; but these blemishes are readily intelligible, if the verses were originally in Pkt as chronicles of the past and were converted into Skt prophecies. Future tenses are longer than past tenses, and if they could not be fitted into the place of the past tenses, it would have been natural to substitute expletives. Thus it may be conjectured that the second, fifth, sixth, and seventh lines ended originally with a past verb corresponding to *abhavat* or *abhavan*. Again, Pkt forms are sometimes longer than their Skt equivalents, and the substitution of the latter would have been compensated for by adding an expletive; thus in the third line *Śivaśrīr vai* no doubt stands for the Pkt *Sivasiri*, and in the eighth line *Pulomās tu tathāndhrās tu* probably mean the ablat. case and stood originally something like *Pulomādo tathāndhrādo*, or *Pulomamhā tathāndhramhā*.