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INTRODUCTION
the work ends. The last line' as found in it runs as follows:
fat eft hurtfall HATAT 1 The remaining portion, from stanza 163 to 261, of the RS has been omitted in the MK. Considering the difference in titles of the MK very minor', this anomaly can be satisfactorily explained anly in two ways by either taking the s MK as a work by an earlier writer or that Durgadeva composed it stopping at 146th stanza and giving the name of the MK to that portion. Subsequently he might have enlarged it upto 261 sts. and might have given the title of the RS to the whole portion. In taking up the second suggestion, the only objection 10 is that an author himself would not praise his own book by using such adjectives as apo etc. though in literature examples are not wanting where the authors would have pursued further their juvenile literary efforts and shaped the same into perfection later, I for my part believe that the MK is by an earlier writer and is Durgadeva made a capital of it, though not at all to an extent of a plagiarist. In this case we will have to take the last line of the MK (the Ms. of which I got from Delhi) as an error of the scribe or some such error. The copyist, who might have come across some loose folios containing the initial portion zo of the RS ( upto 162 stanzas ), would have given it the title of the MK, on the basis of the third stanza", having fallen in a fix regarding the title because the word Ristasamuccaya occurs for the first time in stanza 253 of the RS. Moreover, the MK as such should not abruptly end at 146th stanza 25 (162nd of the RS) leaving unfinished what was undertaken in st. 136 (149th of the RS). This also throws doubt regarding its being a genuine MK. Thus I would close my remarks on the MK by succinctly stating that some ancient, typical and authoritative trend of thought and tradition lies se embedded in the MK which Durgadeva, our author, seems
The second half of the third stanza of the MK uses the word मरणकरंडिया:
FIT (MK, st. 3)
परमरणकरंडियाए रिटुगणं भासियं सुणह ॥ ३॥ 2 Amateur (RS, st. 16), prist (RS, st. 139) and # praotically mean one and the same thing,
3 See st. 16 of the text. * पुवायरियकमेण य लद्धणं दुग्गएवविबुहेण । बरमरणकरंडियाए रिगणं भासियं सुणह ॥३॥
(from the Ms, of the MK).
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