On the Ending -matha for the First Person Plural Atm.in the Buddhist Mixed Dialect

Neither in the Vedas nor in classical Sanskrit and Prākrit dialects do we find the ending -matha for the first person plural Ātm .It is found only in a few Buddhist texts written in the so-called“mixed dialect”. 〔1〕 E. Senart was the first to identify it, although with some uncertainty, as an ending of the first person plural.He says:“Un sandhi pāli vijahāmatha pour vijahāma atha“abandonnons aussi la vie!”est, à cause de la place qu'occupe atha, peu vraisemblable.Nous sommes amenés à admettre une forme très singulière de la première personne du pluriel, dont nous avons déjà précédemment cru rencontrer des traces.p.29, I, II et la note.” 〔2〕 In my thesis: Die Konjugation des finiten Verbums in den Gāthās des Mahāvastu (Göttingen 1941) I collected all the forms ending in -matha found in the Mahāvastu and came to the conclusion that -matha is equal to the secondary ending -mahi in classical Sanskrit which however is used promiscuously with the primary ending -mahe .Dr.W. Krause, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Göttingen, compared it with the Greek ending -μe α (-metha ) and considered it to be a very important discovery in Comparative Philology.Later on, as I began to study the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra , I came to know that Dr.H.Kern had already briefly compared similar forms ending in -matha found in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūrta with those of the Mahāvastu . 〔3〕 But it seems to me that he did not realize the significance of this form.In this article I want to discuss this form again and try to localize it.