Kuvalayamala Part 2

SR No.: 002778
Original Sutra Author: Udyotansuri
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1970
Total Pages: 368
Language: Sanskrit, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 12 MB

Page 26

FOREWORD
It is for me a matter of satisfaction and joy to congratulate my friend Dr. Upadhye on the successful completion of an arduous task which has engaged his attention and absorbed a major portion of his working power for the last sixteen years. The history of the present critical edition of Uddyotana's Kuvalayamālā does indeed go back even much further: it was first planned by Munimahārāja Jinavijayaji shortly after the turn of the century, and actually started by him in 1931. When other activities and duties eventually compelled him to abandon this most exacting and difficult undertaking, he was fortunate indeed in being able to hand it over to the present editor, who succeeded in bringing out the first volume, containing the Prakrit text, exactly ten years ago. Every friend of Prakrit literature, and of Indian literature in general, is sure to welcome with gladness and gratitude the long-awaited second volume, with Dr. Upadhye's comprehensive introduction and the Sanskrit digest by Ratnaprabhasūri, which, after many unexpected vicissitudes and delays, is now being laid before us.
Of the numerous Prakrit works which Dr. Upadhye's indefatigabie zeal and critical scholarship have rescued from oblivion and made accessible to modern research, the Kuvalayamālā is in several respects the most important and interesting. The unusual linguistic inclinations of its author, presenting us with valuable specimens of a number of Prakrit and Apabhramsa dialects and even of "the mysterious Paiśācī", were noticed long ago and have given rise to several investigations, all duly recorded by Dr. Upadhye; it is to be hoped that the full text now avail. able in a critical restitution will provide the solid basis for further linguistic studies. If Dr. Jacobi in the preface to the edition of Hari. bhadra's Samaräiccakahā wrote that it gives "a picture of Indian Life in the 8th century which the antiquarian may study with profit", this might be said with even greater force of the work of Haribhadra's dis ciple Uddyotana; the wealth of cultural data to be gleaned from it is duly emphasized by the editor. From the purely literary point of view, we are presented with one of the great masterpieces of that voluminous Katha literature which is perhaps the most famous contribution of Jainism to Indian literature in general.
The possible sources and literary connexions of the Kuvalayamālā have been fully and ably discussed in Dr. Upadhye's introduction. The nearest, and very natural, kinship seems to me to exist between it and the just mentioned Samaraiccakahā. The latter, as is well known, is centred round the motif of karman and transmigration, used as a lite rary device in a characteristically Jaina fashion: the story follows the fates of two jivas, connected by a nidana, through nine births. Uddyo. tana would seem to have deliberately outdone his Guru by increasing