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1914] JAINA GAZETTE.
205 was completely ousted froin North-Western India as well as from Bengal. From Bengal it was ousted by the Hitopadesha of Narayana Pandit, who lived in Bengal between 800 and 1373 A. D., (date of the oldest known manuscript) as he quotes Kamandaki and Maglia. The Hitopadesha was translated into many European as well as Asiatic languages (into English, German, French, Greek and into Bengali, Braj Bhasha, Gujrati, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Mewari, Persian and Telugu), and into several of these languages it was translated several times. In German, e. g., we have six, in English eight translations, etc.
The Jain part in the Panchatantra recensions just mentioned is not very large. The Tantra-khyayika is the work of a Vaishnava, and such is the North-Western abstract, to which the Southern as well as the Nepalese Panchatantra and the Hitopadesha go back. The Hitopadesha, again, is the work of a Shaiva scholar. But remarkable it is that the Braj Bhasha version of the Hitopadesha has been handed down to us in two Jain manuscripts, either of them containing a different recension, and one if not both of them being written in Gujarat. The well-known ,P. Lallu Lal, a Gujarati himself, did not, as he says, translate his Raj Niti from the Sanskrit, but be simply rewrote the older version of the Braj Bhasha text. This Braj " Bhasba text is a combination of the four books of the Hitopadesha, and of the fourth book of the Panchabhyan or, Jain recension of the Panchatantra. And very probable it is, that its author not only was a Gujarati, but that also he was a Jain.
Of the Southern Panchatantra' very numerous Sanskrit and Vernacular recensions are known to be in existence. Several of the latter as well as a greatly enlarged Sanskrit test show the influence of the Jain recensions of the Panchatantra, inasmuch as they contain many stories which for the first time in the Panchatantra tradition appear in the Jain reeencions.
These Jain recensions which are entitled, not Panchatantra but Panchakhyan, are of the highest importance for the history of Indian narrative literature. As stated above, the Jains, and
especially the Shvetambars of Gujarat, have a very large sharo Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
