________________ Preliminary note to the Devanagari text and to the transliteration The first part of this book is presented as follows: for each of the 24 sections we give 1) the photographs of the original document (painting of the Jina and corresponding text), 2) the Devanagari text, 3) the Hindi translation, 4) the transliteration of the original text. In the Devanagari text and in the transliteration we have done our Western punctuations. We use inverted commas for dialogues. In the transliteration, hyphens have been used for compounds (although we are aware that it is difficult to be totally consistent given the state of the language, which remains influenced by Sanskrit and Prakrit, but has, definitely, the structure of a modern Indo-aryan language). Dandas are used profusely in the original document, but they do not systematically function as punctuation marks. The sign "." (identical to the visarga) is, however, a punctuation mark, indicating the end of a sentence. We have kept it as such in the transliteration. We have made no attempt to harmonize the inconsistencies of orthography whether they concern ordinary words or proper names, as this can be considered as a linguistic feature and should not be seen in a normative perspective as "mistakes". The Nagari script is clear and neat. In a few cases, the scribe or a person who read the document afterwards have noted superfluous syllables which have to be erased. In a few cases, he has written a syllable twice. The scribe has used red ink for colophons, beginnings, and occasionally for verses or other passages. < > indicates superfluous syllables written on the document and marked as such or considered as such by us. () indicates a syllable omitted in the document and restored by us.
