Patan Jain Dhatu Pratima Lekh Sangraha

SR No.: 007173
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Lakshmanbhai H Bhojak
Publisher: B L Institute of Indology
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 360
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 25 MB

Page 8

FOREWORD
I have great pleasure in placing this valuable publication of the BLII at the hands of scholarly readers. It is the result of many years of hard and painstaking work of the Compiler-Editor Pandit Lakshman Bhai Bhojak, who has accomplished it as a labour of love. The learned Compiler-Editor has given an impressive bibliography on this subject, a perusal of which alone would suffice to comprehend the importance of such a Catalogue and its hidden potential for research from the historical, sociological and linguistic points of view.
The present Catalogue of pedastal inscriptions on the images of Jain idols preserved at Patan contains a little less than 1750 entries (making allowance for a few multiple entries made on the same number), covering a period of more than nine centuries from Vikram Sam. 1110 to 2036 (1053 to 1979 A.D). The entries are arranged in strict chronological sequence so far as the main body of the Catalogue is concerned. It is only in the Supplements that the chronological order has not been strictly adhered to. But in view of the highly limited number of such entries, scholars will agree that this does not take away much from the value of the catalogue for historical analysis. The editor has given his reasons for his separating these entries from the main body of his Catalogue, in his Preface. For the sake of completeness, he borrowed these from the earlier compilation by Śri Buddhisagara-Sūri and has had recourse to following the latter's sequence.
(A) VALUE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS FOR LINGUISTIC STUDIES
The importance of these inscriptions for the light they throw on the nuances of linguistic adaptations and developments in practical life have been described at some length with illuminative examples by Prof. Bhayani in his learned Hindi Introduction, which has been lost beyond recovery due to some negligence somewhere. He had demonstrated these adaptations with particular reference to names of persons both male and female and advanced some very interesting explanations for the changes in name-styles through different epochs. In the context of the wide currency of after names of women, he has put forward an ingenious suggestion that this could be the resultant of two common linguistic processes: prakritisation of into and the subsequent elision of the final vowel juxtaposed with another vowel.