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PREFATORY NOTE
In the scheme of publications planned for the Adyar Library, Buddhistic literature forms one important branch of study. Special attention has been paid in recent years to the study of Tibetan and Chinese versions of certain Buddhistic Texts in Sanskrit which had been lost and could only be reconstructed on the basis of their Tibetan and Chinese versions. The Bhavasankrānti-sūtra and Nagarjuna's Bhavasankranti s'astra published by the Adyar Library in 1938, under the editorship of Pandit N. Aiyaswami Sastri, were our first attempts in the direction of such restoration.
Encouraged by the reception which the Bhavasankrānti-sūtra received at the hands of the scholars, we are now issuing the second of the series, the Alambanaparīkşā and Vịtti of Ācārya Dinnāga under the same editorship. A fortunate circumstance has preserved this important Buddhistic work in their Chinese and Tibetan versions while the Sanskrit original has been lost. The Journal Asiatique (Vol. CCXIV, No. 1) contains a French translation of this work with copious extracts from the commentary of Vinītadeva under the joint efforts of Mr. Susumu Yamaguchi of Japan and Henry Meyer of Paris. For increasing its usefulness, it was felt necessary to have the treatise reconstructed into Sanskrit along with an English translation. Pandit Aiyaswami Sastri who is eminently fitted for the task, kindly undertook to prepare and edit the work and has now carried it through to a successful completion. In the
