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PREFACE
tions of stray thoughts selected at random from the Upanisadic bed of Aryan thought-current. The inherent similarities in these systems, as against the essential dissimilarities with Aryan (Vedic and Brahmanic) religion and the gaps that a dispassionate study might detect between the Vedic (including the Brahmanas) and Upanisadic thought-currents, really point out to the existence of an indigenous stream of thought, call it for convenience the Magadhan Religion, which was essentially pessimistic in its worldly outlook, metaphysically dualistic if not pluralistic, animistic and ultra humane in its ethical tenets, temperamentally ascetic, undoubtedly accepting the dogma of transmigration and Karma doctrine, owing no racial allegiance to Vedas and Vedic rites, subscribing to the belief of individual perfection, and refusing unhesitatingly to accept a creator.
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The Prakrit text of Pravacanasara is presented as preserved in the commentary of Jayasena who is the earliest known commentator to pay attention to textual accuracy. Only to throw some sidelight on the dialectal aspect of the gathas two other MSS. have been collated, and their readings are given at the end. All possible care is taken to print accurately the text and the commentaries.
The English translation is as literal as possible, and it is attempted on strictly philological lines. Pravacanasara is translated here for the first time, and so I am perfectly alive to the tentative character of my translation. Professor FADDEGON'S English translation of the text and Amṛtacandra's commentary (Ed. by Dr. F.W. THOMAS, Cambridge, 1935) reached my hands very late, when all the forms of my Translation and Introduction were printed off. I have always taken into consideration, when using English equivalents for Jaina technical terms, the proposals of earlier translators of Jaina texts like STEVENSON, JACOBI, HOERNLE, BARNETT, GHOSHAL, JAINI, CHAKRAVARTI and others; and at times, with due deference to them, I have adopted other words that appeared to me more significant and connotative. Along with the translation, only a few elucidatory notes have been added. In the Index a systematic analysis of the contents is given under alphabetically arranged technical terms. A general Index of the Introduction is added at the end to facilitate further studies.
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At the outset I offer my thanks to the late lamented Pt. MANOHARALAL Shastri, the first editor of the two Sanskrit commen
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