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THE AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
such as would allow no rest. Attracted by the prospect of collaboration and the availability of friends I left Agra for Ahmedabad. There I took up work on Sanmati and whatever had been written at Agra on two or three aphorisms of Tattvārtha remained suspended just where it was.
“At Bhāvanāgar in 1921-22 while I was working on Sanmati the idea of that uncompleted work on Tattvārtha would occur to me now and then and would make me a worried man. Even if the necessary mental equipment was there but since the needed friends were not available I had already set aside that originally formulated elaborate plan; to that extent the burden was no doubt reduced but otherwise the determination to complete the work was absolutely intact. So when on account of indisposition and with a view to taking rest I retired to the village Balukar near Bhāvanāgar I resumed the work on Tattvārtha and having curtailed the elaborate plan related to it, followed a moderate course. During this period of rest the writing was done at various places. Of course, what could then be written out was rather little but an outline—a pattern of the whole work—now got fixed in my mind and a confidence was built up that at some future date I should be able to do the writing even if left alone.
“At that time I would stay and do the writing in Gujarat. The originally formulated plan had already to be curtained; but the earlier mental impressions never vanish all at once—this psychological rule too was holding me in subjection. So the mental impression pertaining to the Hindi language that had been thought of and employed at Agra wás yet present in my mind; hence it was that I had started writing in that very language. Thus two chapters were written out in Hindi. But in the meanwhile the wheel of work on Sanmati that was so long at rest started turning once more, and on account of its momentum the work on Tattvārtha had to be left where it was. There was now no hope of physically continuing with this work, but the mind was nevertheless ever more active. Some amount of concretized form of it made its appearance two years afterwards at Calcutta during a vacation; and it progressed uptil four chapters. After
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