________________
INTRODUCTION.
and all transgressions of the Jaina code of morals, and to warn the reader or hearer of it against carelessness in oonduot; and in this senso it is eminently a dharmakatha.
Apart from their moralising and didactic character Haribhadra's stories are interesting for more than one reason. They give a picture of Indian life in the 8th century which the antiquary may study with profit; the descriptions of marriage ceremonies, of court life, of journoys and sea voyages, of the Sabaras and Caņqitas, etc., contain many details of interest. The Samardicca Kaha is also of great literary interest" as & specimen, and reflex, as it were, of the more popular literature of fiction current in the 8th century, which must have been a very extensive one, both in Sanskrit and Prakrit though yery few works belonging to it have come down to us. Among the works which probably served Haribhadra as a model, may be mentioned tho Tarangavati by Padaliptasūri, the most ancient and famous of Jaina romances. The original text has been lost, but a later recasting of it, Tarangalolă, has been preserved (in & very faulty manuscript), of which Professor Leumann has given an abbreviated German translation. The reader of it will be struck by the similarity of ideas in it and in Haribhadra's work. But there is this difference that while in Tarangalola karma, remembrance of a previous birth and its consequences, etc., serve to motivate the story, in the Samaraicca Kaha the story serves to illustrate those ideas and to impress the hearer with certain moral principles. The latter work iş a didactio povel, the first of its kind known to us. This literary genus reached the highest degree of perfection in Siddhart's Upamitibhavaprapanoa Katha. .
Haribhadra is quite explioit about the source from which the main story or series of stories is derived. In his introduotion (on p. 6 of the pregént edition) he gives eight gáthás in
i Tho great extent of the literature of Action in, old times may be inferred from the division in parikathi, sakalakath, khapdakathi, kathi, and akhylyk, already given in tho, Dhvanykloks p. 141. Only worts written in a hightlown or the mout artifidal style of Subandhu or Bina com to have won the lasting achtration of the learned, which accounts for the preservation of a greater nombor of them and the lows of others
