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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
PREFACE I am glad to be able at long last to place this volume before the learned public for use and evaluation.
The difficulties in the way of my doing so were many and multifarious and presented themselves at each stage since inquiries began to be made for getting the work printed and published at a reasonable cost. However by the grace of Him to whom this work has been dedicated they could all be surmounted one after another.
I regret I am not able to offer copies of this work at a price which any and every student of the Bhagavadgitā can afford to pay but my excuse is the enormous rise in the prices of the materials and the wages of the labourers employed in the printing presses during the years 1943-45.
I take this opportunity of publicly acknowledging my gratitude to the late Dr. V. S. Sukhtankar Ph. D. for the practical advice which he had ungrudgingly and unassumingly given to me when I consulted him on two previous occasions and for having consented to favour me with a Foreword to this work when I met him in the first week of January 1943 on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona. I sincerely regret that he suddenly passed away in that very month before completing his course of lectures on the Mahabharata at the end of which I was to have delivered my manuscript to him for that purpose as he had desired.
I am however glad and fortunate to have secured for the same purpose the good-will of Dr. S. M. Katre M.A., Ph.D., Director, Deccan College Post-graduate and Research Institute, Poona, who has already made his mark in the world of oriental research as the author of certain works on Indology and the principal editor of some commemoration volumes and three oriental research journals, the Oriental Literary Digest, the Deccan College Quarterly and the New Indian Antiquary. I thank him sincerely for having spared sufficient time to look into the manuscript carefully and to contribute the Foreword. I confess it has given me confidence in my new line of work.
I am also thankful to Mahāmahopādhyāya P. V. Kane M.A., LL.M., and Professor H. D. Velankar M.A., for having spared time from their multifarious engagements for going through my manuscript and favouring me with their valuable opinions before I offered the work to the University of Bombay for publicatian on its behalf. Though that University could not see its way to accept that offer it showed its appreciation of my work by offering to give a grant of Rs. 500/- towards the costs of its publication, should I be prepared to publish it on my own. I thankfully accepted the offer and hereby publicly acknowledge that solid and encouraging financial assistance from it with thanks. I also acknowledge with thanks the assistance which two of my brother lawyers Messrs H. S. Desai and S. V. Desai, Advocates (O. S.),
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