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CRITICAL APPARATUS
The dialectal form of the Prakrit gāthās, though they are physically placed in the Sanskrit commentary of Amstacandra, is substantially made to conform to the text as incorporated in the Sanskrit commentary of Jayasena, who, as it is evident from some of his remarks in his commentaries on the works of Kundakunda, appears to be particular about the Prakrit text; and hence, I was tempted to collate the gāthās with the MSS. containing the commentaries of Amộtacandra and Prabhācandra, which have been designated as A and P and are described below. I regret, however, that I could not get a Ms. containing only the commentary of Jayasena.
For the benefit of those who want to read the Prakrit text continuously, I have given the Text with Various Readings in this edition. The Readings are collected from the following MSS. A-It belongs to Sri Ailaka Pannālāla D. Jaina Sarasvati Bhavana,
Bombay 4; and it is numbered as 5347/1364. It is a paper MS. oblong in size, measuring about 121 by 61 inches. It contains 70 leaves plus the last one. From the contents it is clear that some leaves after the 70th have been lost; and, therefore, the major portion of the final prose passage in Amstacandra's commentary is missing; in the first book gātha No. 23 with its commentary is not copied due to oversight; otherwise the Ms. is quite intact, though the last page is slightly damaged in one corner. The Ms. contains the gāthās, chāyā and the Sanskrit commentary of Amstacandra. The MS. is fairly accurate, especially in Sanskrit portions, leaving aside some orthographical errors that can be easily detected. The writer appears to be an intelligent copyist with an uniform Devanāgari hand. In the first and the last five pages he has written the introductory remarks, preceding each gāthā, in red ink; but in the middle they are simply rubbed over with red chalk; it is very convenient to read the gāthās only, which, otherwise, would have been very difficult to be detected in those continuously and closely running lines. It is with this MS. that I have checked some of the knotty points in the printed text of
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