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established repute, " Jaina Ratna Divākara," the sun of Jaina religion has not been able to escape misunderstanding, creating a great disturbance among the Jaina public because of his wrong interpretations here and there, in the absence of a really helpful dictionary. Thus a great harm has been done to the religious and literary ancient Prākrit works, the literature is not yet safe and free from being misinterpreted. Such events and circumstances attracted the attention of my revered father and made him realise the absolute necessity of the preparation of one such dictionary, enabling scholars to understand the right application of words and their real significance. Accordingly, in 1910 A. D. my father began the work of collecting and arranging systematically the words, used in the Jaina Sūtras and could with his incessant efforts collect about fourteen thousand words in a short time. On this occasion the reputed Italian scholar, Dr. Sualī, expressed his intention of preparing a Prākrit dictionary to the Svetāmbara Jaina Conference, a fact, which pleased my father Mr. Kosarichandji Bhandāri who made over this list of words to the said conference for being forwarded to Dr. Suali with the view that the great senolar's work would be facilitated to an extent at least, by this collection and would be best arranged by the well-known scholar with his keen intelligence and ability. Unfortunately in the meantime the great war broke out in Europe and on account of this and such other various reasons, Dr. Suali could not undertake the work. At my father's request the Svetāmbara Sthānakvāsi Jaina Conference promised to help the preparation and publication of this dictionary and happily he took up the work, which was no easy task in the absence of help from scholars and such other important equipments. The great work thus could not make a fast progress and was a source of great anxiety to my father, who for his pressing work, was at this stage called upon to go to Bombay, where he could luckily chance to see the great saint and scholar Satāvadhāni Muni Sri Ratnachandraji Mahārāj. Eagerly conscious of the great task before him, my father lost no time in availing himself of this happy occasion and he requested and appealed to the great sage to accept the work. In keeping with the magnanimity of heart and the great devotion
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