Risht Samucchaya

Author(s): Durgadevacharya, A S Gopani
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan

Page 34

PREFACE
The Rinascomicccnya is a small work containing 261 stanzas in Jaina Sauruseni Prakrit by Durgadeva, a Digambara Jaina writer of the liest half of the cleventh century A. D. When I was working in the Oriental Institute at Baroda (1935-6), editing of this work was one of my undertakings. Somehow it was to be loft unfinished. Afterwards I joined the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavall it Andheri where I got ample scope and convenience to work again at it and the result is now before the leaders in is book form.
The Ristosomuccuya of Durgadeva has been catalogued hy Aufrecht and referred to by the Jaing Granthārali.
Durgaderit is it master hand at the art of condensing. Nis treatise in the Jaint or non--Jaina literature is uptill now known to have so bly summarised in so short a compass a vast topie like that of prognostics portending death. He is a matterof fact writer making it detinite statement of his beliefs and conclusions sometimes following and many times going against the established theories. He has impressed me more as an iconoclastic chronicler than is a passive compiler. Looking to his varied gifts and wide range of his experience I have begun to believe liumly that he was in possession of sure traditional kuowledge of which we have but scanty information.
Cave offered here the detailed results of my studies of three important Mss. of this work that were available to me. The constitution of the text which I have done with maximal faithfulness Wits very much troublesome in view of grammatical and metrical corruptness, material inaccuracies, scribal errors and lacune. Looking to the limited material at my disposal I had no other alternative but to offer emendations which I have placed in brackets and which claim to be only tentative. I have attached i Sanskrit Cháyä and an English Translation to ensure ENSV delsta line of the text. All the Tatjants 310 toted in the foot-otex. Insertion of representative parallel passages in the Appendix cathered from various published and unpublished