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INTRODUCTION
97 After Canto 5 comes Canto 6 ending with verse 67 (incom. plete), followed by 8.17 (minus the first sentence) to the end of Canto 8. After this comes Canto 9 ending with verse 43 (incomplete), followed by the remaining portion of 6.67 to the end of Canto 6. Then comes Canto 7, after which appear the first sixteen verses of Canto 8 and the first sentence of 8.17, followed by the remainder of 9.43 to the end of Canto 9. Fortunately the sequence of the remaining Cantos is not broken by any such confusion. The ms. is, on the whole, carelessly written, but the Setutattvacandrikā, mentioned above, has been of great use in preparing the extracts from the commentary of Kulanātha.
Kulanātha, like Krşņavipra, is an important commentator, and is known to have written also a commentary on the Gātbāsaptaśatī. There is reason to believe that the old commentary of Kulanātha on the Setuband ha had gone out of use; and a systematic effort was made in Bengal to compile a new commentary, primarily based on his work. The Setutattvacandrikā appears to have been the result of this undertaking. It is compiled from different sources, but mainly from Kulapātha, probably by more than one scholar interested in Prakrit studies. The study of Prakrit poetry and specially the Setubandha seems to have been popular in Bengal, as can be seen from the making of commentaries on the work and the existence of a ms. of the text in old Bengali characters, dated in Lakşmaņasena Samvat 102 corresponding to 1222 A.D.2
Kulanātha refers to two earlier commentators of the Setubandha. In his gloss on Setu 6 63 he quotes a remark of Sriharşa to elucidate the purport of the verses; and the same is
1 Cf. Pitambara's Gathāsaprasati prakasika, ed. Jagdish Lal Introd., p. 15. 2 Descriptive Catalogue, pp. X, 630. 3 See Extracts 6.63.
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