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APPENDIX III
REVIEWS
A Review by Dr. V. Raghavan, Madras :
The thirty-first publicationding importance. Prākrit por only among them being
from Nāgaloka and Elements of the story whole story is cited as a rebrakāśa and
The thirty-first publication of the Singhi Jain Series of Muni Jinavijayaji, the Lilāvati, is a work of outstanding importance. Prākrit poetry which flourished side by side with Sanskrit poetry had many master-pieces, a few only among them being known now; some of these, like the Harivijaya of Sarvasena placed by Kuntaka alongside of Kalidāsa, are yet to be unearthed; fortunately, the Lilāvati, equally wellknown to the Alankārikas and known to be available in some MSS. libraries, has DOW been brought to light by the indefatigable labours of A. N. Upadhye of the Rajaram College, Kolhapur, who has made consistent and substantial contribution to Prakrit studies and the unearthing of Prākrit classics.
A fabled pearl necklace seems to have been coming down in the annals of ancient Indian royal houses. Bana recounts its story, when the Buddhistic teacher presents it to King Harşavardhana, of how the great Bhikshu Nāgārjuna secured it from Nāgaloka and presented it to his friend King Sātavāhana. Anandavardhana refers to this story. Elements of the story are echoed in the play Ratnāvali. The Prākrit poem Lilāvati which narrates the whole story is cited as an example of the type of composition called Katha in verses by Bhoja in his SȚngaraprakasa and following him, by other rhetoricians. Two manuscripts of this work were in existence in the Jesalmere and Pattan Jain Bhandars, and one with a Sanskrit commentary in the Anup Sanskrit Library, Bikaner. Dr. Upadhye's edition of this classic, which is a noteworthy achievement in the progress of Präkrit studies, is based on these three manuscripts. The oldest and best of these three is the Jesalmere MS., with which the Pattan Ms., which alone is complete, is related: the Bikaner MS. stands apart: the MSS. material has not been, as the Editor says, adequate for the constitution of a completely satisfactory text; out of a total of 1357 gāthās, a few, 5, 9 and 10, are found in excess in each one of the above three MSS. respectively.
Besides the Sanskrit equivalents jotted as marginal notes in the Pattan Ms., reproduced in the footnotes, the edition includes also the Sanskrit commentary, which is incomplete, and the Chāyā found in the Bikaner MS. The Sanskrit gloss is from the pen of a late Jain scholar and his Chāyā is sometimes not correct: for example, vidvat-kušala and vidya-kušala in gāthās 102 and 823 are wrong wrong for viddhakusala; veyadiya in 733 is 'vaikaţika', a knower of precious stones, and the 'svarnakara' in the Chāyā is only an explanation.
The author of the poem mentions his father as Bhūşanabhatta, different from the son of Bāna known by that name, and his grandfather as Bahulāditya. It is not clear whether we should take the name of the author as Kautūhala; as the editor has shown, the evidence is not clear on this point: the later Jain commentator understands the word as naming the author, and even mentions his wife to whom the poem is addressed, as Savitri: what tradition or evidence he had, we do not know now; but we may add that the spirit of gātha 146 would support the taking of Kautūhala as the author's name.
The hero of this romantic story is King Hala Satavāhana of Pratişthāna, reputed as the compiler of the Prākrit Saptaśati and friend and patron of Nāgarjuna, Pālitta, Kumārila, and Pottisa, the verses of some of whom are also found in the GathaSaptaśati and who are figured in this work also. The title theme is the marriage of King Sätavāhana with Lilavāti, the daughter of King Silāmegha of Simhala. It may be pointed out that a Silāmegha, King of Ceylon, associated with the composi
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