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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
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Also cross-references have been given to a few Tantra works which have been inadvertently included in the other Catalogues in the Series 1. A few works which were not identified in the slips left by MM. Shastri have been identified by the present editor in this Catalogue 2 The Collection had some MSS. of the same texts split up into two parts with separate numbering, and through inadvertence this was not detected. The present editor has combined the split MSS. into the single ones that they really are, and has entered them as single items 3.
The present editor in revising and seeing through the Press this Catalogue, which owes its inception to the labours of MM. Shastri and can be said to have been prepared by him, has been actuated by a spirit of respect and reverence for the memory of the great scholar from whom he received his inspiration in studying, cataloguing and editing Sanskrit MSS. The MSS. described were very precious in the sight of the late MM. Shastri, and the present editor has taken pains that their special features be brought to the notice of scholars. He has for this purpose compared these MSS. with printed editions and descriptions of other MSS. of the same work from other Catalogues. He only hopes that the Catalogue as revised by him under the direction of the authorities of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal will be worthy of the great scholar who would have published it himself, had Fate spared him to us for a few years more.
The problem of arranging the MSS. was a difficult one. The importance of a proper classification of the Tantras for a correct appreciation of a particular work in its true perspective cannot be emphasised too strongly. It is evidently for this reason that enough stress has been laid on this matter in the Tantras themselves, which definitely forbid one sect following the prescriptions of another which are positively harmful to the former. But the traditional principles of classification are too intricate and obscure to be applied to a catalogue. They should form a special subject of study by themselves. It is all the more distressing to find that confusion is worse confounded by the fact that some of the later works are
1 Cf. descriptions under Nos. 6124, 6162, 6219, 6308, 6510 and 6716. 2 Cf. Nos. 6055, 6126, 6154, 6155, 6161, 6164, 6189, 6191, 6246. 3 Cf. Nos. 6254-5, 6655, 6712.
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