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six)
PREFACE
entered this Sanskrit Avacūrikā for his own guidance in the Ms. in his possession that was containing only the text. The name of the scribe is given thus at the end of the Ms. : mazh: I BATTAA
HII 0. 724yèolested. But from this it cannot be made out whether this Nayasamudra is himself the author of this Avacūrika or he has merely copied it. It is certain that he was a Jain monk. There have been many Jain monks bearing the name Nayasamudra and some of them have also some works in Old Gujarāti, etc, to their credit. But as the present scribe has given neither his spiritual lineage and preceptor, nor his date, there is no means to know anything about his time or his identification.
The scribe who has copied the text in this Ms. has not bestowed sufficient care on his task and consequently he has included as a part of the text those stanzas also which give the definition of some particular metre employed in a staza of the poem. For example, the 18th stanza of the text is composed in Raddā metre. In the Ms. which must have served as the prototype to our Ms., somebody must have marginally entered the stanza defining Raddā metre from metrical treatise of an author called Nandaddha. The scribe of our Ms., considering this definition stanza as a part of the text, copied it runningly with other stanzas of the text. Similarly because the 21st stanza is in Paddhaďı metre, a stanza giving the definition of this metre has been included in the text as its part. The stanzas of the poem also have been numbered erroneously so that the last stanza, instead of being numbered 222 or 223, bears the number 216.
Ms. B -- This Ms. was acquired from the Jñanabhandar of Achārya Shri Jinaharisāgarji at Lohāvat in Marwar. It contains 28 leaves in all. The name of the copyist is not given. But doubtlessly he was a Jain. Though the name is not given he has mentioned the place and the day, from which we know that writing of this Ms. was completed at Hisāradurga (i. e. Hisār fort in the Punjab) on the 8th day of the bright half of Āşādha, Wednesday. If some more trouble had been taken to put down the number indicating the year also, we would have got at least the exact date of the Ms. But as that thing is not done, it is not easy for us to say in what century the copy was prepared. Though if any scholar wishes to exactly find out
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