Sambodhi 2000 Vol 23

Author(s): Jitendra B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 11

DR N. M. KANSARA
SAMBODHI
his stay at Kapadwanj, BKTM is said to have borrowed some amount from Shri Manilal Desai, a money-lender of Dakor and devotee of him, and as a security against the borrowed amount, he had pledged his manuscript notebooks safely stuffed and packed in a few tin trunk boxes. As a security containing the life-long research work of his highly revered Shankaracharya, the boxes were scrupulously guarded and preserved by Shri Manibhai who had spread his bed on the place under or beneath which the boxes were kept. It seems, BKTM somehow could not repay the amount to Shri Manilal Desai till the end of the latter's lifetime, say till about the year 1955 or so. And then, the boxes came under the charge of Shri Laxminarayan, the son of Shri Manilal Desai. Shri Laxminarayan got them transported from Dakor to his residence at Asarva in Ahmedabad.
Professor Vijaya M. Sane,? who evinced a great interest in tracing the location of the boxes containing the manuscript note-books of the VM in sixteen volumes, took great pains in utilising his contacts with the higherup in the Gujarat Government and Gujarat Police Department, and finally located the residence of Shri Laxminarayan in Ahmedabad, got in touch with the then Jagadguru Shankaracharya Swami Shri Abhinava Sachidananda Tirthaji Maharaj of Sharada Peetha, Dwarka (Gujarat), got the boxes confiscated and searched. But the boxes were found to contain useless scraps and old shoes and such other trash. After that when Prof. Sane contacted Shri Laxminarayan personally and talked to him, he was told that some German scholar had came searching for him and had offered big amount for the VM manuscript material of the sixteen volumes; that he had sold the contents of the boxes to that German scholar for Rs. 80,000/-, and had stuffed the boxes with rubbish. Even after that Shri Sane tried his utlost to trace the whereabouts and identity of the German scholar, through the help of Hon'ble Shri Hitendrabhai Desai, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, but his efforts donot seem to have met with any degree of success so far. This must have happened some time in the year 1955-56, since, "unfortunately, the said munuscripts were lost irretrievably from the place of their deposit and this colossal loss was finally confirmed in 1956''.8
And as has been declared by Smt. Manjulaben Trivedi,9 her husband Shri Chimanlal Trivedi, found that Secretary of the Sri Vishva Punarnirmana Sangha, found that as a result of demonstrations before learned people and