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INTRODUCTION
[ To the Old Edition ]
The Mahāpurāņa or Tisatçhima hāpurisaguņālamkára is the earliest and the largest of the three known works of Puşpadanta in Apabhramśa. Of the two smaller works, the Jasa haracıriu was edited by me and published in the Kāranjā Jaina Series, Vol. I, 1931. The Ņāyaku māracariu was edited by Professor Hiralal Jain and published in the Devendra kirti Jaina Series, Vol. I, Kāranjā, 1933. I am now presenting to the reader the first volume of Pu şpadanta's Mahāpurāņa comprising the Adipurāna, and hope to complete the work in two more volumes. When I announced in my introduction to Jasa haracariu that I had undertaken the edition of the Mahāpurāņa I did not realise how enormous the task before me was, and what financial and other difficulties the editor and the publishers might be involved into, but I am glad, after six long years of waiting, to offer to the linguists and the students of the Jain cultura the first volume of this great work, and now I can assure the reader that if no further difficulties arise, I would offer the rest of the work within the next two or three years' time, so that all the three extant Apabhramsa works of Puşpadanta will have been brought to light,
This Volume contains the first thirty-seven Samdhis out of the total of one hundred and two of the entire work. This portion is popularly known as the Adiparva or Adipurāna, and describes the lives of Risaha or Rşabha, the first Tirthamkara, and of Bharata, the first Cakravartin. The second volume will begin with the thirty-eighth samdhi and end with the eightieth, and the third volume will cover all the remaining samdhis. Dr. Ludwig Alsdorf of Hamburg, Germany, has just published in Roman characters a portion of the Mahāpurāpa under the title “Harivamśapurāpa, Ein Abschnitt aus der Apabhramśa Welthistorie, Mahapurāņa Tisaţthima hāpurisagupālamkāra von Puşpadanta, Hamburg, 1936", which contains samdhis 81-92 of the work. This portion will be re-edited in Devanāgarī characters and in corporated in the third volume, so that the entire work will now be made available to the public in a uniform edition. Besides as we now possess more Mss. than Dr. Alsdorf was then able to get, improvement on his work may be possible.
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