________________
OPERATIONS IN SEARCH OF SANSKRIT MSS.
chhulipârsvanatha in the village Kachchhuli lying below Mount Abu. There the scribe tells us Mânik yaprabhasûri died; and there Udayasinha was born. This manuscript is written on cloth with black ink, the leaves being 13 inches long and five inches broad. It is in beautiful preservation. The manuscripts under review add something, as was to be
expected to our at present scanty The Sirinnbachariya of Devilchaudra.
" knowledge with regard to Devachandra,
the teacher who laid the foundations of Hemachandra's learning. According to Jain accounts (Bühler's Hemachandra, p. 7 fg.) Hemachandra was born in the Vikrama year 1145=A, D. 1089, on the full moon day of the month Kârtika. His parents were of the Bania caste, Châchiga and Pahinî. The mother was a pious disciple of the monk Devachandra. Once 12 pon a time she dreamed a dream, and seemed to herself to be presenting to her honoured teacher the “chintamani" stone, that grants all desires. Devachandra expounded this dream as meaning that she would bcar a son who would be the Kaustubha jewel, as it were, in the ocean of Jain learning. Time passed and the son was born, but the dream and its interpretation were forgotten. When the young Chângadeva- for such was Hemachandra's baptismal name, so to speak-was five years old, he accompanied his mother to the temple, and to the surprise of all sat down on Devachandra's seat. When Devachandra heard that this youth was Pâhini's son he reminded her of the dream, and claimed the child. He took him to Cambay, where, on the fourteenth day of the light balf of the month Magha of the Vikrama year 1150= A. D. 1085, a Sunday, Chângadeva received the first initiation and the new name Somachandra. This legend undoubtedly means, as Bühler points out, that Devachandra, anxious to secure a successor, induced Pahinî and her husband to part with the boy, that he might become a yati. In theory, the ranks of yatis are recruited from persons who have been awakened to a sense of the idleness of worldly things, and who seck shelter from temptation in the quict of the monastery. In practice it was and is different. The community procure the children of poor parents and present them to the yatis, that the line of teachers may be kept up. The illegitimate children of Brahminical widows are frequently the objects of their choice: their mothers are willing and anxious to part with