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INTRODUCTION
(First Edition)
1. GENESIS OF THE UNDERTAKING WHILE working as Springer Research scholar of the Bombay University during 1926-28 I occupied myself with the surveying work of the Prakrit literature in general and of the Apabhramsa works in particular. In the course of my labours in that direction I commenced examining the Bhandarkar Institute MS. of Puşpadanta's Tisatthimahápurisaguņālamkāra, of which the late Dr. P. D. Gune included a short notice in his introduction to the Bhavisayattakahā, published in the Gaekwar Oriental Series at Baroda. It came to my knowledge that the Bhandarkar Institute Library of MSS. contained a few more MSS. of this work and also a MS. of another work, JASAHARACARIU, by the same author. Just at this juncture Rai Bahadur Hiralal published his Catalogue of Sanskrit and Prakrit Manuscripts in the Central Provinces and Berar and, on going through it, I discovered, to my delight, that the Karanja Tain Bhandars contained several MSS. of the two works mentioned above, and in addition, one more work, Nägakumāracariu, by the same author.
While I was studying the Tisatthimahāpurisaguņālamkāra and the Jasaharacariu at the Bhandarkar Institute, which works were composed at Manyakheta, the modern Malkhed in the Nizam's territory, another idea struck me, how far would these works of Puşpadanta, written in the Apabhramsa language and composed in the province of Mahārāstra proper, throw light on the origin and growth of the Marathi language. For, it is a well known fact that a very large number of works in the old Marathi were composed or revised within a radius of about a hundred miles from Manyakheța, the capital of later Răstrakūtas. The discovery of Puşpadanta's works at Káranja in Berar, therefore, particularly delighted me, as I thought, I would find therein pre-Marathi Apabhramsa records composed, and also preserved, in Mahārāstra which would be of great value to the history of the Marathilanguage. Consequently I made up my mind to visit the Kāranja Jain Bhandars for this purpose during the Christmas holidays of 1927, It was on that occasion that I made acquaintance of Prof. Hiralal Jain, M. A., LL., B., of the King Edward College, Amraoti, who, within a few days of my visit, made a proposal to me that I should edit the Jasaharacariu of Puşpadanta before undertaking the bigger work, Tisatthimahāpurisagunālamkāra, and that I should allow it to be included in the Káranja Jain Series as its first volume, which proposal I readily accepted.
2. THE CRITICAL APPARATUS
The critical apparatus on which this edition of the Jasaharacariu is based consists of four manuscripts collated in full and three more MSS. partially collated in cases of doubt. I also used pretty frequently the printed edition of the Hindi
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