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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
(xii)
are not infrequently found to follow different ritualistic manuals. This is a fact which makes the find of MSS. of Tantra works of Bengal in non-Bengali scripts all the more interesting.
The present volume describes MSS. of this type of works like the Mantra-ratnākara (6192), Śākta-krama (6197, 6199), Tattvānandatarangini (6200), Tantra-sara (6187ff) and Karpūrastotraṭikā by Siddhantavägisa (6629). It may be noted here that a MS. of the Tantra-sara in Nagara characters is also mentioned by Burnel (Descr. Cat. Tanjore, p. 207).
A reference may incidentally be made here to another ritualistic work of Bengal, the Syama-saparyā-vidhi of Kāśīnātha Tarkālankara, a MS. of which is in the Madras Oriental Library (Triennial Catalogue, V. 5122).
(iii) Material. The material on which the MSS. are written is mostly hand-made indigenous paper, the yellow-coloured variety of which is found to be manifestly superior, in point of durability, to the white-coloured stuff and especially to modern machine-made paper, which is used in a number of MSS.1 Palm-leaf MSS. are very few in number-one (5804) in later Gupta script, a few each in Newari, Udiya and Bengali and only one (5807) in the Nagari script 2.
(iv) Date. The number of old works and MSS. is very few in the present volume, as compared with that in some of the previous volumes of the Series. The oldest MS. described in the volume is the Kubjika-mata (5804) which is written in later Gupta characters. Two other old MSS. that come next are those of the Yuddha-jayārnava-tantra (Nos. 6110, 6109) one copied in 1097 A.D. and the other in 1270 A.D. Of the latest MSS. there are a few copied in the beginning of the present century (Tantra-siddhanta-kaumudi-6223, and Mantra-siddhanta-mañjarī-6224).
1 Exactly the same state of affairs was noticed in different parts of the country as early as the seventies of the last century (Gough-Papers relating to the collection and preservation of Ancient Sanskrit Literature in India, Calcutta, 1878, p. 15). Machine-made paper has been referred to in the earlier part of the volume as 'foolscap paper' or 'Serampur paper'.
* The rarity of palm-leaf MSS. in the Nagari Script was noticed in 1876 (Gough, op. cit., pp. 211-2). It may also be noted in this connection that no palmleaf MS. of any work in the Bengali language is known, while scarcely any MS. in Udiya on anything but palm-leaf is available.
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