Padmanandi Panchvinshti

Author(s): Balchandra Siddhantshastri
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh

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EDITORIAL
The work now presented here, critically edited, accurately translated into Hindi and thoroughly studied, has enjoyed continuous celebrity for nearly one thousand years. A portion of it was commented upon in Kannada for the benefit of a local ruler in Karnātaka about 1136 A. D. . commentary, included in this edition, was written on it at some unknown time; and a commentary in Hindi was written about a hundred years back in Rājasthān. Various Sanskrit and Präkrit writers and commentators are found to have referred to it and quoted from it more or less continuously from the 12th century onwards.
This popularity of the work from north to south is due to its subjectmatter and style. In its present form the work consists of twenty-six small tracts, quite independent of each other, on subjects which are of vital interest from the Jaina religious point of view. The style is simple, often lucid and elucidative. The language is Sanskrit, except for the two tracts, Nos. 13 and 14. which are hymns composed in Prākrit.
From the point of view of its compilation, the work has passed through three stages. At first the author composed a number of independent small works which must have become popular according to their own individual merits. One of these, namely Ekatva-saptati ( No. 4), is found to have attracted the special attention of subsequent writers. At the second stage, some compiltor collected twenty-five of these small compositions and named it Padmanandipañcaviñsati after the author and the number of the works collected. At the third stage, yet another tract, probably the last in the present collection, was added to it without changing the name of the work. It is difficult to say whether this additional work was by the same author or of some one else. A few verses seem to have been added to or interpolated in the works so that such names as Saptati, Pañcāśat and Aştaka are found to have become untrue to the number of verses now included under them. In its present form the total number of verses in the work is 939, arranged under 26 titles. The longest of them (No. 4) contains 198 and the shortest (Nos. 17 etc. ) only 8 verses.
There is no direct evidence available concerning the date of the author or the region of his activities. But the Kannada commentary on one of the tracts (Ekatvasaptati) together with other fragments of information obtainable, enables us to determine with reasonable certainty that the work was produced in the Karnāṭaka region, probably at Kolhapur or its vicinity, between 1016 and 1136 A. D. If the conjecture that the author and the Kannada commentator are identical proves true, the composition could be assigned to the latter date with the margin of a few years this way or that.