Pasanahchariyam

Author(s): Padmkirti
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 10

FOREWORD
Pārsvanatha, the twenty third Tirathankara who preceded Lord Mahavira by about two hundred and fifty years, was the head of a religious organization in which Mahavira later entered after renouncing the world. When Mahavira started preaching his own religious and philosophical teachings he never took credit for evolving them but always maintained that whatever he was teaching was not new and all of it had already been preached by Pārsva. Mahāvīra always referred to Pārsva as "Puruṣādāniya" - the best amongst men. This reverence shown by Mahavira to Parsva perhaps impelled the followers of Mahāvīra to show equal if not greater reverence to Pārśva. As a result some of the followers of Mahavira wrote numerous eulogies, devotional songs and prayers addressed to Pärśva, others composed independent poems on the life and teachings of Parśva. Out of these about twenty five works, dealing with the life of Paraśva has so far come to light. One of these is a work by name Păsa-purana or Pāsanāhacariu (sanskrit-Parsvanatha-carita) written by Padmakirti, which is a long poem in Apabhramsa verses.
This work, though noted in various catalogues and bibliographies, has neither yet been studied in detail nor published. Hence a detailed study of the same has been undertaken by me. This study has proceeded accordings to following plan :
1. The text has been reconstructed, on the basis of two hand-written manuscripts. One of them written in V. S. 1575. Every effort has been made to see that this text is correct. The various readings have been recorded in footnotes. Pages 1-170.
In Apabhramsaq and a are both short and long. In presenting the text in print care has been taken to preserve them both, and consequently the Apabhramś a sounds and rhythm have been accurately reproduced. For this purpose new casts which are not normally available in Nagari types had to be improvised. Thus short has been presented as or ğ and short a as or a in the printed text. Similarly anunāsika which represents only the nasalisation of the vowel, has been presented with this mark on the vowel concerned.
3. An exhaustive vocabulary has been prepared and appended to the text.
2. Apabhramsa text of Pasanähacariu as critically constituted has been rendered fully and accurately in Hindi. An attempt has been made here to bring out the sense and emphasis of each word of the text consistently with the present literary style of Hindi. Pages 1-114. Therein each Tadbhava word has been given its sanskrit equivalent. Hindi meanings of all the words have also been given. The place where each word has occurred in the text has also been noted. The verb have been marked with this sign so that they can easily be distinguished. Under the verbs their derivatives and the places where they occur in the text have also been noted. The Deśi words have been marked with asterisk. Pages 143-190. 4. Technical terms and grammatical peculiarities occurring in the text and not fully explainable in translation have been explained, as also the words and phrases of doubtful nature, in the notes.
Pages 190