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( eleven
Bhandars. There is also the possibility of finding out another Sanskrit commentary or gloss on the text. For example, when the printing of the present text was finished, Shri Agarchand NAHTA of Bikaner sent to me an incomplete Ms. of this work from his private collection. There were seven leaves only, containing the first 109 stanzas of the text. The Ms. contained the Sanskrit Vartika also, which was mostly identical with the Avacurika given here, but it was by a different author. Its first stanza was word for word the same as the first stanza of Lakṣmicandra's commentary, excepting the fourth pada, which instead of reading a gaga: as in Laksmicandra, reads
fg. Accordingly we come to know that some Labdhisundara was the author of this commentary. The Ms. being incomplete, we have no means to know whether the author had said at the end anything regarding himself, his Guru, etc. Can this Labdhisundara be in any way connected with that Nayasundara who is mentioned at the end of the Poona Ms.?
PREFACE
Most of the readings of this Bikaner Ms. (N) are the same as those found in B, but there are places where the two Mss. differ and hence it appears that the Bikaner Ms. also has a different Ms. tradition from that of the three Mss. previously described. From this, it will be seen that to prepare a really critical edition and present the text in a purer form, we should acquire as many Mss. of the work as is possible to get, and work on them with sufficient diligence.
As Prof. Bhayani has, in his 'Critical Study' exhaustively treated most of the specially interesting and novel features of this work, it is not necessary for me to touch those aspects and I confine myself to saying a few words regarding the date of the author. I have not come across any definite external evidence which would fix our author's date. No reference to the Samdesarāsaka is found in any other work. We have to make a probable guess regarding the author's time and here our first definite ground, which supplies at the same time the terminus ad quem for the date of the poem, is Lakṣmicandra's commentary that is published here along with the text. The commentary is composed in 1465 V. S. (1409 A. C.). Therefore, it is obvious that the author of the Sandesarasaka flourished earlier to this date. But to say how much earlier ६ सं. रा.
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