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92 : Šramaņa, Vol 61, No. 3 July-September 10
used by the Jaina community in the course of time: Prakrit, Sanskrit, and, later in North India, old Gujarati, modern Gujarati and Hindi. As far as the Uvaesamālā is concerned, the fairly large number of commentaries is a sign of the popularity and fame of this book. About twenty are known. All are not of the same standard and of the same interest. The earliest ones are more precious insofar as they preserve a good deal of older material and hand down the stories at length, either in Prakrit, Sanskrit or even Apabhraíśa. Thus they are indispensable tools for any investigation of the life and development of the text itself. Let me just mention two of them: 1. the first one (which is also the oldest one preserved) was
composed by Siddharși towards the end of the 9th century. It seems to have been published in India but is very difficult to get, and has never been studied carefully, in spite of H. Jacobi's encouragements to do so; it is known in two different recensions: a shorter one with no story; a longer
one, expanded by a later author. With stories16. 2. the second one, composed by Ratnaprabhasūri, at the end of
the 12th century, is also published in India and accessible!7. It cannot be separated from the preceding commentary, since the author himself claims that he depended upon it and states that he generally took over the explanations of his predecessor!
As for Tessitori, he knew about the existence of these two commentaries, which were listed in Reports and Lists of manuscripts found in India, and he refers to them, if only to assess the date of the Uvaesamālā, but, due to the lack of manuscript in Europe, he was not able to use these texts. However, he had at his disposal a third commentary, composed in the first half of the 13th century by Udayaprabhasūri, a manuscript of which was available in Florence, together with two anonymous commentaries in Sanskrit and Gujarati respectively. He occasionally refers to them in the footnotes of his edition and uses them as auxiliary tools for
