Bruhat Katha kosha

Author(s): Harishen Acharya,
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

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[A 13]
latter work, and with indexes of the verses and proper names in it, preceded by a critical introduction in Hindi. In this part a mass of new material throwing light on the Prabandha-cintamani and the life and literature of the period has been called and brought together, and here we find ample evidence of the wide reading and the critical and historical acumen of Śrī Jinavijayaji. There are as many as 58 such prabandhas in Prakrit (apabhramsa) and Sanskrit. A most valuable find in this connexion has been of the fact that Apabhramsa equivalents (going back to the age of the Prabandha-cintamani) of some of the verses of the Prthvi-rāja-rāsau the old 'Hindi' epic of Canda Kavi are found in this collection. This makes it clear that extant Prthvi-raja-rāsau is not so spurious or recent as many scholars were inclined to think. Muniji has given the Apabhramsa verses side by side with the 'Old Hindi' of the Rasau (p. 9, Introduction), and in this way he has thrown important light on the genesis and development of this great landmark in North Indian Vernacular literature. The conclusion is inevitable that the original Rasau was a kind of Apabhramśa and not in a Modern Indo-Aryan speech; and that the Rasau is more a continuation of the Apabhramsa tradition in language and literature than a new vernacular beginning. Muni Jinavijayaji puts forward a vigorous plea for a proper critical study of the Răsau Text, which must be broad-based on a wide knowledge of prakrit and Apabhramsa literature, particularly the latter, before out of the mass of very corrupt verses in the received text of the Răsau something like a satisfactory edition could be evolved. The edition of the Rasau published by the Nagari pracāriņi sabha of Benares from this point of view is just an uncritical and non-philological reprint from the MSS. Muni Jinavijayaji urges upon the taking in hand of a new critical edition of the Rasau by the Nagari pracāriņī sabhā emulating the critical edition of the Mahabharata by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute of Poona, basing it on a comparison with the huge mass of published and unpublished Apabhramsa verse narratives, distichs and stanzas, and fragments. This is as sound a proposal as can emanate from a scholar whose erudite researches have traced out a new track in what was a hopeless tangle. The other volumes remaining, contemplated to complete the work, will consist of (3) a complete Hindi translation, with critical introductions, of parts I & II already published in the original; (4) a collection of epigraphical records (in the shape of inscriptions of all sorts, MS. colophons etc.), and all available materials dealing with the persons mentioned in the Prabandhacintamani with a critical account of it all in Hindi; and (5) An elaborate general Introduction surveying the life and culture of the period covered by the work. These two parts, (4) & (5), will be fully illustrated by plates. The Prabandha-cintamani gives the history of Gujarat in relation to Jainism a thousand years ago; and although an English translation by C. H. Tawney, good but tentative in some parts, was published from Calcutta by the Asiatic Society of Bengal many years ago, the good edition of the original was a desideratum; and the Singhi Jain Series' has given it to the world with critical and other apparatus such as would please the most fastidious. When completed, these five volumes will give the most detailed study of this