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SOME OBSERVATIONS ON JAINA
GOTRAS.
BY
A. N. Upadhya, B.A.
THE
HE list of Gotras published in Jaina Gazette (XXIII, 8, 229.) with its supplement (Ibid 9, 259) has not failed to attract the attention of critical readers, as can be seen from Mr. K. P. Jain's note thereon (Ibid 10, 11 and 12; 293). No doubt the list is interesting in various ways and as Mr. Kampta Prasada remarks, it needs further elucidation. It is a moderate ambition of these following paragraphs to shed some side-light on the literary constituents, if not the sources, of that list.
The present writer could get another Ms. of this list, copied for him from an old Ms. in Devanagari Characters. As the list stands it is a self-sufficient booklet with an interesting Colophon 'Iti Gotra-sutra-pravara-Sakha-mani-nikara samapta." Comparison of this Ms, with the list published in J. G. had proved really fruitful. The Printed Text (P. T.) gives seventyfour Gotras with their Pravaras &c. While this Ms. gives eighty-four. Only seventy-one Gotras with their Pravaras &c. are common to both; the last three of the P.T. are not found in the Ms, and the last thirteen from the Ms. are not found in the P.T. The numbering in the Ms. is different: 1-32 of the P.T. are numbered in the Ms. as 40-71 and 33-71 as 1-39. The Gotra 26th of the Ms. is not found in the P.T. of which the 66th is a blank. Looking to the usual method in the list of assigning two Gotras to each Sakha one expects from the list itself that one Gotra is missing between 57 and 58 (P.T.) and its Sakha must be the same as that of 57. The Gotra 26th of the Ms. fulfils the condition. The numbering in the P.T. appears to be more genuine, from the fact that the names of Sutras and Pravaras whose literary sources have been traced below, are found in this Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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