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Abhinav Pandey

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Hemachandra

A figure from the books

#Hemachandra

Hemachandra · c. 1088–1172 CE

In the books · 1 chapter

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Who this is

Jain monk and ācārya — grammarian, lexicographer, prosodist, logician, poet, historian; his age called him Kalikālasarvajña, "the all-knowing one of the degenerate age".

“A Jain monk wrote the only surviving grammar of Apabhraṃśa — the spoken tongue that grew into Gujarati — inside a royal Sanskrit grammar so celebrated the king paraded it on the state elephant; then he talked the next king into laying down the kingdom's knives.”
— The Great Indians, Ch. 94

The big idea, in the book's words:

“One monk wrote his kingdom a complete education — grammars of its languages down to the street speech that would become Gujarati, dictionaries, poetics, a universal history — and then converted its king, turning a medieval state into history's most ambitious experiment in governing by non-violence.”
— The Great Indians, Ch. 94

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