________________
1.:"The idea of the formation of a Prākrit Text Society is, at Jeast, half a century old. As far back as 1903 Dr. 'Pischel, 'the greatest scholar of Prākrit languages in modern times; had already thought of a Jaina Texts Society, the materialisation of which appeared to him only to be a question of time. But thirtytwo years after this Dr. P. L. Vaidya, President of the Prakrit Section of the eighth Session of the All India 'Oriental Conference held at Mysore in 1935, had to emphasise the same point in the course of his lecture, "a society on the lines of the Pāli Text Society will have soon to be formed for the purpose (ie, scientific éditing of the Canon) and the Jáina community, should assure the Society that they will help it financially.", Dr. N. P. Chakravarti, President of the same. Section of the ninth Session of the Conference held at Trivandrum in 1937, had observed, "I cannot help strongly endorsing the suggestion already put forward by Prof, P. L. Vaidya in his presidential address of the last Session of this Conference for this Section, that there should be a Society formed on the lines of the Pāli Text Society, which should undertake a critical and uniformly fashioned edition of the important Jaina works. The work that can be done in this direction is extensive. Such an edition of many of the Canonical texts is still a desideratum, not to speak of the numerous non-Canonical works that are yet to be edited." : . All these suggestions have borne fruit at last, and it is grátifying to note that the Präkrit Text Society has been established in 1953 under the patronage of Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Republic of India. It is undoubtedly a: great event in the history of Prākrit studies. The Society is indeed fortunate in securing the full co-operation of Muni Sri piinvaviiayaji, a venerable doyen of Prākrit and Jaina studies in India, who has devoted a whole life-time to the study and preservation of ancient Jaina Jñāna-Bhāņdāras ( manuscriptlibraries) and to the preparation of critical cditions of numerous texts. As las 'been aptly said by Dr. V. S. Agrawala and. Mr. Malyania, secretaries of the Society, "his ascetic discipline
