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We are specially thankful to Prof. Anantalal Thakur, the present Director of the Institute, who, with his loving care, always helped us in all possible manners throughout the whole span of eight years by offering suggestions and providing references wherever necessary. Had he not taken special interest, this work could not be presented in this form.
We would be failing in our duty if we do not acknowledge our most sincere thanks to those scholars and friends without whose suggestions and assistance this work could not be accomplished.
Specially our thanks are due to Prof. S. N. Sharma of the St. Andrew's College, Gorakhpur who gave useful and valuable suggestions throughout and helped us in bringing out the work in the present form. Similarly, Dr. S. N. Chaturvedi and Dr. Shivaji Singh, both of the Department of Ancient History and Culture of our University deserve our sincere thanks for suggesting the method of deciphering the manuscript. Prof. Dr. V. S. Pathak, Professor in the Ancient History and Culture Department of our University gave valuable suggestions in editing the text, hence our thanks are due to him also. Our thanks are due to Shri L. Jamspal formerly of the Sanskrit University, Varanasi and now of the Delhi University who helped us in reading the Tibetan version of the text and to Shri V. N. Tripathi of our department who kindly went through the press-copy of the Sanskrit text, suggested a few improvements and
