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JAINA GAZETTE.
[June & July
The success of the 'textus simplicior' was enormous. All the numerous subsequent recensions of the Panchatantra, whether written by Jainas or by Hinduistic authors, by scholars or by layman, in Gujrat, in Maratba, in the Deccan, in further India, in Indonesia and in Nepal are either based on this text, or else have largely availed themselves of it.
Next to it in time comes the recension of the Jain monk Puran Bhaddra Suri, who wrote his work in A.D. 1199 or Samvat 1255. In his Prashasti he tells us that he was ordered by some minister Shrisam to revise the old Shastra Panchtantra, which had become Vishirnavarna 'disfigured.' He tells us further on that he did his work with great care, and that he not only corrected it, but added to it new materials. A close examination and collation of his text with older recensions has shown that this statement is quite correct. Purna Bhaddra mainly combined the textus simplicior' with the Tantrakhyayika; but he must have compared still other old sources, as in some places he is in accordance with only the Pahlavi translation, or Samadeva's abstract, or that of Kahebbendra, respectively. Moreover he added 16 stories of his own. As I had the good luck to use some very old and valuable Manuscripts, I was able to give in my edition of this work a text which at all events comes very near to the wording written down by the author himself. An English translation of this text by Paul Elmer More will be published in the Harvard Oriental Series.
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Most of the very numerous Panchakhyana Manuscripts current in North-Western India contain combinations of the 'textus simplicior' with Purnabhadra's text. Some of them are interesting because of new tales they contain. Amongst these mixed recensions there is one which in part has been translated into Greek by Demetrios Galanos, a Greek merchant who went to Calcutta in 1786 era and lived there amongst the Brahmans, studying their Philosophy and their literature, and translating several Sanskrit works into his native language till his death which took place in 1833. The German translation of Benfey (1859 A. D.) the French of E. Lancereau (1871), the Italian of I. Pizzi (1896) and the Danish of H. Rasmusson (1893) are made Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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