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PREFACE OF THE GENERAL EDITOR
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: I got an opportunity, by a piece of good luck, to visit Jesalmere and inspect its famous Jaina Jñāna Bhandāras for a period of five months, from December 1942 to April 1943. I had with me a company of good scholars and copyists viz. Pandit Keshavaram Shastri, Curator of the Mss. Library of Gujarat. Vidya Sabha, Ahmedabad, and a scholar of repute, Pandit Amritlal Mohanlal Bhojak, a fine and sound scholar of Prakrit,
thentic copyists of the script of ancient Palm-leaf manuscripts-Shri Chimanlal Bhojak, Shri Rasiklal Bhojak, Pandit Shantilal Sheth, and. Shri Mulchand Vyas, Shri Jayagopal Vyas and Shri Meghraja Vyas of Nagor and others. pe In the course of these five months I got copied from those Bhaņdāras hundreds of rare unpublished and unknown small and big works in Sanskrit, Prakit, Apabhramsa, old. Rajasthani, Gujarati, Hindi and Vraja languages...existing in manuscript form; I decided to publish some of these in the Singhi Jain Granthamālā edited by me. As a result of this some works are already published and some are in the press."
Sabdaratnapradipa which is being presented to the learned world as the nineteenth number of Rajasthāna Purātana Granthamālă was discovered from the Jñānabhandāra of Jesalmere. A copy of this work was prepared by Pandit K. K. Shastri from two-three well preserved Mss. of the Jñāna Bhaņdāra. This copy is in possession of the Gujarat Vidya Sabha, Ahmedabad. I had at the time thought of publishing this work.
In 1950 Rajasthāna Purătattya Mandira was established by the Rajasthan Government under my Directorship. In order to bring to light the wealth of literature preserved in Rajashthan, I organised on a large scale the publication of Rājasthāna Purātana Granthamālā. The chief aim of this series is to publish as many works as possible out of hundreds of works lying hidden in Jesalmere and other places in Rājasthāna. Hence the publication of a number of these works in the series, of which the present work is one.
Prof. Dr. Hariprasad Shastri M.A., Ph.D., Assistant Director, B. J. Institute of Learning and Research, Gujarat Vidya Sabha, Ahmedabad, the editor of the work has in his introduction treated all relevant topics
