________________
INTRODUCTION
1. CRITICAL APPARATUS
The Prakrit text of the Kuvalayamālā, critically edited here for the first time, is based on the material from the following Mss.
P-This paper Ms., written in Devanagarī characters, belongs to the Deccan College Collection, and is now deposited at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, No. 154 of 1881-82. It has 133 folios, the first being written on only one side. It measures 32.5 by 12.5 cms. The mode of writing is uniform, but it changes on page 80a, line 8. There onwards, the letters are slender, the ink is more thick, and the writing point a little more broad. To begin with, there are 18 lines on each page for some 8 pages and then 17 lines on each page, and then again 18 lines from p. 81a onwards where, as noted above, the writing is more compact with smaller letters. In full lines there are some 72-77 letters in the earlier part, but they rise to 76-80 in some lines where the writing is more close.
This Ms. is well preserved on the whole. The paper is good, though turned brownish now. Some corner portions are exposed to moisture with the result that there is darker appearance, and the ink also is rubbed in some places. Here and there the white ants have eaten the edges of some folios and bored holes too in the middle. The edges of some folios are lately mended with paper pasted along the border. The first folio, which was damaged in the corner, has a backsheet lately pasted; while the last folio is more thick originally. Folio 2 is torn but mended with transparent paper, and some of its letters are rubbed away. The written portion on a page measures about 9.5 by 27 cms. On the right and left sides there are two marginal lines (in black ink) sometimes single and sometimes double. There is a decorative blank space (sometimes written ornamentally with some letters from the running line as on folios 25-7, 115-6, 119-21, 125-27) in the centre of a page; and this space was necessary for the string-hole in the palm-leaf Mss. This Ms. is written in black ink. Here and there the numbers of Gathas (wherever they are put), the double or single Danda, beginnings of fresh topics, terms like ahava, avi ya, tattha vi, cha, tam jahā, kim etc. are spotted with red chalk (gairuka). The top left-hand corner of the margin bears the name Kuvalayamālā (sometimes contracted as kuvalayamā, kuva o mālā etc.) in Devanagarī and the right-hand corner of the page below has the page number, this being the back-side of the folio. Taking the folio No. 25, one side say 25a has no title and page-number which are put on 25b. The letters which the copyist could not read from his exemplar are left blank by him only with the head-lines or serifs. The traces of the use of modern black, red and green pencil and of red or blue ink are also seen here and there to mark some references of geographical, historical, cultural and literary interest. There are a few marginal additions and corrections: those on pp. 26a, 39b, and 51b are modern, while that on p. 80b is perhaps of the copyist himself.
The Ms. has the following beginning after the symbol of bhale (with two Dandas on both the sides) which looks like Devanagarī sixty (see the chart of its akṣaras):
1
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
