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XLIX
divided into Ankas or acts; dramatic terms like nişkrantah, pravis'ati etc. are used at the end and beginning of different chapters from the end of the 2nd chapter; and he uses, here and there, other terms quite usual in Sanskrit dramas. Jayasena, too, adopts these terms, but he calls the chapters as Adhikāras.
INTRODUCTION.
4. PRAVACANASĀRA OF KUNDAKUNDA
a) Study of Pravacanasara.
PRAVACANASARA IN ORIENTAL STUDIES.-Pavayanasara or Pravacanasara of Kundakunda is a pretty popular work in Jaina circles, and copies of it would be found almost in every Digambara collection1; but it is very lately, especially because the Digambaras were too reluctant to open their stores of books for others, that the MSS. of it fell into the hands of orientalists. Bulher knew its name as a sacred work belonging to the dravyānuyoga group of the Digambara literature". K. B. Pathak too referred to it as a work of Kundakunda3. It was the late Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar, that all-round brilliant and stationary Dhruva star in the firmament of oriental learning, who, in his monumental report for 1883-4, gave some excerpts from Pravacanasara, and gave also the analysis of it incorporating a translation too of a few gathās; concludingly he compared some of the Jaina tenets with those of Samkhya, Vedanta and Buddhism, and attempted a chronological evaluation of Jainism as a system. Some of his conclusions were so striking that they received almost immediate attention of and were searchingly scrutinised and criticised by Dr. Jacobi; and so far as I know, his criticism never appears to have been replied to by Bhandarkar; perhaps, he had no immediate occasion for that. Further Pravacanasara finds place in Strassburg collection of Digambara MSS., and is consequently noticed by Leumann". Pischel, in his comparative grammar of Prakrit dialects, took a grammatical notice of the gāthās quoted by Bhandarkar and came to the conclusion that the dialect should be designated as Jaina S'auraseni. Later on, since its publication',
1 I am very thankful to Prof. H. D. Velankar, Wilson College, Bombay, from whom I learn that there are 8 MSS. of Pravacanasara at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, .1 at Arrah, 2 at Müdabidri, 3 at Sarasvati Bhavana Bombay (2 of which are used for the present edition), 1 at Bhules'vara Jaina Mandira, Bombay, and 6 at Terapanthi Bada Mandıra, Jaipura. Besides, MSS. of this work are available in Karanja collections (See Catalogue of Sk. and Pk. MSS. in C. P. and Berar, 1926) and also in local Mathas of Kolhapur and Belgola.
2 I. A., Vol. VII, pp. 28-9.
3 I. A., Vol. XIV, pp. 14-26; there is no work named Prabhṛtasara though Pathak mentions it along with Pravacanasara.
4 SBE, XLV, Introduction p. 35 etc.
5 Wiener Zestschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vol. XI, pp. 297-312.
6 Grammatic der Präkrst-Sprachen in the Grundriss etc. Strassburg, 1900.
7 Edited in RJS, samvat 1969; published with Br. Shitalprasada's Hindi translation of Jayasena's commentary in three vols. Vira samvat 2450-52, Surat; 'an English translation of Pravacanasara was promised by the Jaina Literature Society, London, but is not published as yet.
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