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JINEŚVARASŪRI'S GĀHĀRAYANAKOSA
V. M. Kulkarni Ancient Indian poets, as a class, were extremely reticent about their personal history, education, environment, the influences that shaped them; their family life, their successes and failures. Poets like Bhāsa, Kalidasa hardly speak of anything about themselves. This suicidal indifference on the part of ancient Sanskrit and Prakrit poets and authors was most probably due to their strong belief that what really mattered was their poetic creation and not their own personality. The thought, idea or feeling embodied in a poem alone was important and not the poet who wrote it or the time when he composed it. Alamkārikas too held identical views as is clear from their works wherein they dealt with the poetic products as created and finished facts never bothering themselves about their authors. It is this colossal indifference which is responsible for not preserving authentic names of poets or their works in the anthologies of Hāla (Sattasai or Saptasatakam or Gatha-Sapta-Satz), Jayavallabha (Vajjalaggam), Chappa. ņņaya (Chappannayagahao) or Jinesvarasüri (Gahd-rayanakosa). We should, however, be grateful to these anthologists for preserving at least some of the finest and highly poetic and Subhāşita-like verses of many unknown poets who are totally forgotten by posterity. All these Prakrit Kośas are compilations of stanzas of other poets barring, of course, a few stanzas of the anthologists themselves.
The L. D. Institute of Indology (Ahmedabad) has recently brought out an unpublished Gaharayanakosa. This is compiled by Jipeśvarasuri towards the close of the 12th Century A.D. In a short Preface Pt. Dalsukh Malvania, the Director of the Institute, points out the importance of the present volume wbich presents three gāthasangrahas, published for the first time and thanks the Joint Editors Pt. Amritlal M. Bhojak and Dr. Nagin J. Shah who have taken great pajas to make the edition useful and have tried to present the text as flawlessly as possible.
In their brief but valuable introduction tbe Editors first give a des. cription of MSS. They then dwell on the importance of Subhāşita-sangr. has : Such anthologies rescued from the oblivion a large number of floa. ting verses. They proved of help to religious teachers and preachers in their didactic works or lectures in clarifying and corroborating the point of discourse. The Subhasitas had great appeal to the common mind. They constituted the strength or power of language. Looking to their usefulness
