Ganitasara Sangraha of Mahavira

Author(s): Rangacharya
Publisher: Rangacharya

Page 15

PRBAD.
work. Although incorrect in many places, it proved to be of great value on account of its being complete and containing the Kanarese commentary; and my thanks are specially due to Mr. A. Mahadeva Sastri for his leaving it sufficiently long at my disposal. A fifth manuscript, denoted by B, is a transcription on paper in Kanarese characters of a palm-leaf manuscript found in a Jains monastery at Mudbidri in South Canara, and was obtained through the kind offort of Mr. R: Krishnamacharyar, M.A., the Sub-assistant Inspector of Sanskrit Schools in Madras, and Mr. U. B. Venkataramanniya of Mudbidri. This manuscript also contains the whole work, and gives, like K, in Kanarese a brief statement of the problems and their angwers. The endeavour to secure more manuscripts having proved fruitless, the work has had to be brought out with the aid of these fivo mauuscripts ; and owing to the technical character of the work and its elliptical and often riddle-like language and the inaccuracy of the manuscripts, the labour involved in bringing it out with the translation and the roquisite notes has been heavy and trying. There is, however, the satisfaction that all this labour has been bestowed on a worthy work of considerable historical value.
It is a fortunate circunstance about the Ganita -sära. sangraha that the time when its author Mahavirácărya lived may be made out with fair accuracy. In the very first chapter of the work, we have, immediately after tbe two introductory stanzas of salutation to Jina Mahavira, six stanzas describing the greatness of a king, whose name is said to bave been Cakrika-bhasijana, and who apipears to have been commonly known by the title of Amõghavarsa Nņpatnnga; and in the last of these