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Ancient Jaina Hymns
405
smoother reading from the standpoint of the tonic qualities, and gives more aesthetic satisfaction from that of the train of ideas than the 'viņayaparu' of our manuscript, by harmoniously gratifying the curiosity regarding the poet's identity, which the words at 5 **** Gilfs ook afha'' i.e., “With folded hands, I, your servant .... pray”, arouse in the reader.
The manuscript from which this hymn is being published was kindly placed at my disposal by Upadhyāyaji Śrī Labdhimuniji of the Kharatara Gaccha, from the Bhandāra of the Sāntinātha Temple of Ujjain. It consists of six leaves of country paper ( 4/10), bearing on the margin the figures 3-8. Each leaf has four lines of bold 'paļimātrā' Devanāgari characters of archaic type, in which the hymn is recorded, with an interlinear commentary written above the text in smaller letters, all in black ink. The cyphers, colophons of the original hymn as well as of the text which preceded the latter, and of which only the final passage is preserved, and the vertical marginal lines are in red, the marginal lines being double, and the interstices filled with yellow pigment. The right and left margins moreover are decorated with multicoloured floral designs, considerably reduced by frequent handling, owing to which even the original marginal cyphers of paging have partially disappeared, being subsequently over-written by fresh ones. The yellow pigment used for corrections, has likewise become so much worn off by friction, and is so much faded that the corrected letters are clearly discernible below it. From all this it seems that the manuscript must be fairly old.
The first two leaves obviously contained the well-known and often published 'Bharateśvara-sajjhāi' (part of the Tapā Gaccha Liturgy ), part of the last stanza of which appears on the top of the first leaf numbered as the third.252 Our hymn is the last text of the manuscript and bears the following colophon : “इति श्रीसीमन्धरस्वामिFra 11 HA11 II II". The interlinear commentary has the colophon : “इति श्रीसीमन्धरस्वामिस्तवनाचूरि समाप्ता ।।". More than half of the
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