________________
PREFACE
WHEN for the first time in 1912-13 A. C., I began to
examine the Jain Bhandars at Patan, my primary object then was to find out with a view to research the literary works composed in the Early Vernaculars. At that time I had yet little aquaintance with Sanskrit and Prakrit, but with Old Gujarati (or the Old Western Rajasthani, as it is known among the scholars) I had cultivated a considerable familiarity. Of course I was as yet only a fresh student of it. My perusal and study of the research articles dealing with Gujarati language and literature that were being published in the early Reports of the Gujarati Sahitya Pariṣad and also in the early numbers of the periodicals like the 'Gujarati' had created in me a desire to know more and undertake investigation into these subjects. I had already come in close touch with the Rasa compositions by the Jain monks of which there was such a profusion, and my visit to the Bhandars of various places had given me some idea as to what a big number of such works had been preserved in the Jain Mss. collections. The Bhandars at Patan were since long very famous for being the oldest and richest Mss. collections pertaining to this subject and so, when I got an opportunity to live in Patan near Pujyapada Pravartaka Shri Kantivijayaji Mahārāj whom I considered as my highly revered Guru, I began to prepare a list of the Old Rusūs found in those Bhandars in order to satisfy my curiosity and to have a general idea of how great an amount of such sort of vernacular literature was lying buried there. In this list the information was being gathered under the heads like title of the work, name of the author, date of composition, date of copying, extent of the work in Granthagras, number of folios, condition of the Ms., etc.
During these years a controversy was raging in Gujarat among the scholars of Old Gujarati as to who was the earliest poet in Old Gujarati, and the non-Jain scholars almost unanimously had assigned that place to Narasinha Maheta, But there were one or two Jain scholars who had declared their
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
