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127
VI
That such a monumental work as Siddha Hemacandra should have attracted the attention of a host of eminent scholars, almost from the beginning was but to be expected.
It was first systematically edited by that versatile scholar S. P. Pandit in the Bombay Sanskrit Series quite early, and was later revised more than once by Dr. P. L. Vaidya, and published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute, Poona. Several eminent Jain scholars also brought out fairly good editions of this great work for the use of Jain clergy and laity. They generally give the bare text and eschew linguistic discussion. Renowned Western scholars like Pischel, Yakobi, Woolner and others based their studies of the Prakrit speech mainly on Hemacandra's Prakrit Grammar (f.), while L. Alsdorf and De Vreese focussed their attention principally on its concluding section on Apabhramsa. Dr. H. C. Bhayani, an eminent Gujarati scholar of Middle Indo-Aryan, brought out in 1960 an exhaustive students' edition of the Apabhramsa section (in Gujarati), explaining the sutras and their illustrations, and commenting at places on their grammatical peculiarities, with an exhaustive linguistic and general introduction.23
All these studies were based mainly on the MS-material collected by S. P. Pandit long time ago. Though the transmission of the text has been very good indeed, because a vast number of copies were made in Acarya Hemacandra's life-time, and some of them may have, presumably, received the benefit of his supervision and perusal, an authentic text derived from MSS which could be considered to have been close descendants of Acarya's autograph copy-the possible archetye of fu-was still a desideratum, if only to confirm the Prakrit and Apabhramsa text of the work, so far used by scholars, and also, at places where necessary, to emend the few inaccuracies which always creep in during successive transmissions.
Such an opportunity came to the present writer almost fortuitously, when he was engaged in editing the great Old Gujarati23 Dr. H. C. Bhayani,
(Gujarati), pub.
Forbes Gujarati Sabha, Bombay 4; 1960.
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