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Sheth Devchand Lalbhai Jain Pustkoddhar Series No. 1.
PREFACE OF FIRST EDITION.
Jain Literature, comprising as it does almost all the branches that are characteristic of ancient Indian literature, holds no insignificent a niche in the gallery of that literature. It is considerable even as it is at present and was more SO in former times. This is not the proper place to enumerate the great writers and their works that constitute the glory of that literature. The fact that the Jain writers had flourished in great abundance in times gone by, is evident from the vast stock of literature that has survived this day, though it is yet in. an unexplored state. Their eminence in subject matter as well as language is manifest to those who are conversant with it.
Along with Indian literature at large, Jain literature too has been a participator in the unhappy fate it met with at the hands partly of alien bigotry, partly of mutual religious jealasy and
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