Apbhramsa of Hemchandracharya

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Kantilal Baldevram Vyas, Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

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task. It was his efforts at systematizing the Jaina Jñanabbandāras and his boundless generosity in lending MSS to deserving scholars, Indian and foreign, that gave a fillip to the study of rare Sanskrit, Prakrit and Old Gujarati works of great literary merit and historical importance. He himself was an acknowledged scholar of early history and culture of Gujarat, and his mastery over the Jaina 'Agamas' was unparalleled. To this latter task he devoted the last precious years of his long life. It was his vast erudition, and his generosity in lending MSS to deserving scholars that enabled the present writer to carry out his important studies in these fields. :
The Bombay University facilitated by generous grants the long trips the present writer could undertake in search of MS getting them photographed. *** The late Dr. K. M. Munshi encouraged the present writer by offering to include this work in the Bharatiya Vidyā Series. But printing such a complicated work accurately, and in time, presented almost insuperable difficulties and consumed an inordinately long time. The text was printed by the famous Nirnayasāgar Press. Then with the writer's transfer to the M. N. College, Visnagar, the Notes, the Dodhakavrtti, and the Index had to be seen through at the small ‘Vis nagar Printery', whose scholarly manager, Shri Devshanker N. Mehta, did the job fairly well.
Then with further transfers and later on a study tour to the United States, the work came to a stand-still. And several years thus went by,
It was only recently, with the very solicitous help of Panditji Dalsukhbhai Malvania, an erudite scholar of Prakrits and Jainism, and former Director of the L. D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad, who graciously u ndertook to include this work in the Prakrit Texts Series, of which he is the general editor, that the present writer could undertake to write an Introduction and complete the work. With the printing of the Introduction the work is finally complete and the present writer is immensely grateful to Panditji that the work could be published even after a lapse of so many years.
The writer gratefully acknowledges the help he received from the late Dr. Adinath Neminath Upadhye, who read the typescript