Gaudavaho

Author(s): Vakpatiraj, Narhari Govind Suru, P L Vaidya, A N Upadhye, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 60

(xLii)
King, so purifying, will now be told to you all, which you will do well to listen ".
This evidently leads one to conclude that the present Poem is just prefatory or “a Prelude ", as Pandit prefers to call it. Says he?B “ It may be added that if we are to take the present poem as the whole poem and not merely as the prelude, then it is a singular one. For we have neither the name of the Gaudian king, nor that of his capital, nor the reasons why he was killed, nor the circumstances under which, nor the manner in which, he was killed. It is improbable in the highest degree that the killing of an unnamed and therefore, obscure king who is disposed of in three or four couplets, out of twelve hundred and more-most of which have no concern with him or his death -- could have given the name to the Poem which it bears "..."The conclusion, accordingly, ... is that what we now have of the poem is merely the preface or prelude, and that the real Poem, giving a full account of the circumstances under which Yašovarmā slew the king of Magadhas, has not been found, if it was ever written, or it may be, has not come down to us; and that the bare reference to and short mention, in one or two places, of the flight and death of the king of the Gaudas, before the second part of the present Poem begins, are merely made to serve as incidents, which make the learned friends of Vākpati prefer their request to him that he should narrate fully the story of the slaying by Yašovaramā; and that there is nothing either in MSS. or in the Commentary to militate against this conclusion; indeed the latter directly supports the conclusion, so far as it says anything on the subject."8
7B Pandit : Gaüdavaho' - Reprint, Pages xlvii — xlix. -78 Haripāla, commenting on the word 'zi? in Gathā
1073, explains it as - 7711 ..