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However, I have done my best not to leave out anything which was not purely repetitive or redundant. I felt I could take a little liberty with the text because the more scholarly task of rendering the original in all its movements has already been admirably accomplished in English by no less an indologist than the erudite Jacobi. In this edition, too, M. Vinaya Sagar's version provides the Hindi koowing reader with a similar rendering. The English and the Hindi versions will, I hope, serve to complement each other.
I have prepared my translation with the general reader in mind. I have thus paraphrased technical terms wherever I could. Yet many unfamiliar terms and phrases of a rather technical nature still remain. The more important of these have been explained in the glossary at the end.
I would like to add a word of caution here. One cannot really do justice to a technical term while paraphrasing it within the flow of a narrative. I have sometimes given up total exactness in favour of a simple rendering without doing unduc violence to the spirit of the original. Here is an instance. In describing the austerities undertaken by the Tirthaikaras and their disciples, the text recounts the number of fasts that cach had observed. Thus Mahavira is said to have fasted 'chathenas bhattanam after he gave up his life as a householder. I have translated 'chathenam bhatthenam as: taking one out of six regular meals. This is broadly correct, but it docs not totally portray the procedure followed in such cases. A person who fasts 'chathenars bhattenan' misses a meal on the day he begins his fast; then for the next two days he misses all four meals and, finally, on the fourth day he takes one meal, missing the other. Phrases similar to 'chatthenar bhattenan', like 'atthenawi bhattenami,''cautthenam bhattenan' etc. occur repeatedly. I have translated them simply as 'missing one out of eight meals', 'one out of four meals' etc. But in truth the procedure was analogous to the one followed for 'chatthenam bhattenan'.
In many places my interpretation may disagree with those of other translators. This I think is natural. For an old text does admit of more than one interpretations. In coming to my own conclusions
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