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Gommates vara Commemoration Volume
The gāhā presented by Pt. J. K. Mukhtar is :
gommațasuttallihane Gommatarāyena jam kaya desi / so jayau ciram kalam (rão) namena ya Viramartandi /
While writing the Gommagasāra (at the time of preparing the first copy of the Gommatasara) Gommaţarāya who prepared the desi ( who prepared its chāyā in Kannada, the desi language ) and who is well known as Viramattamdi, may this King be victorious for long.
Further, Pt. J. K. Mukhtar comments : Here we should take desi to mean the Kannada chāyā and not the Kannada vȚtti or ţikā for which requires, on the part of the author, far better capacity which cannot be, at that stage, expected of Cāmundarāya to instruct whom the Gommațasāra was being composed. But, unfortunately, this chayā of the Gommafasāra by Cāmundarāya too is not available.
With some hope in this regard, I closely scrutinized the Kannada Prāntiya Tadapatriya Granthasūci and was, at the first sight, extremely glad to note MS No. 55 of the Gommațasära" in the Kannada script with the following note added by the editor : 'This MS contains a Kannada vștti written in Salivāhana Saka 1821 by Cāmundarāya and to the všiti is appended a Kannada prasasti in detail'. But the very next moment the date mentioned therein (Sā.Saka 1821) disappointed me. Could the date be wrong? Or could this Cāmundarāya be some other recent author who wrote this vstti? Or could it be that some furious lines in the MS may have led the editor to add this note ? Only a close examination of the MS itself would throw light on these surmises.
After taking, thus, a critical survey of the various commentaries on the Gommațasāra, one is struck by a fact that the Kannada commentary of Keśavavarni, which is complete, thorough and the biggest in volume, still remains in the manuscript form, though its Sanskrit translation and the latter's Hindi version have come to light long back. The Manuscript Library of the Jaina Matha at Moodbidri alone possesses several MSS of the Gommatasāra with the Kannada commentary of Keśavavarņi. Besides there are many other MSS of the Gommatasāra with the Kannada commentaries noted anonymously. With all these in view, I would irresistably appeal that some capable Oriental or Jaina Institute should have this great Kannada commentary of Keśavavarni critically edited by some competent scholar and publish it soon, so that the importance and value of the Gommațasāra would stand out in their perfection. Moreover this project may also throw some light on the alluded desi attempt - a vstti, pratilipi or chāyā-- in respect of the Gommatasära by Camurdarāya."
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