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PREFACE
The Tilakamanjarı, composed by Dhanapala sometime during the period between 1015 A. D. and 1055 A. D. in Dhara the impirial capital of the Malava Empire of Paramāra Bhojadeva, is a classical Sanskrit prose-romance (gadya-kāvya) interspersed with occasional verses. Set though it is in a Jaina socio-religious background, it eflects the contemporary social and political situation as well as the literary and cultural trends during the heydays of the Paramāra Empire of Mālwa. A critical study of the work and its detailed literary evaluation in the setting of a comprehensive contemporary perspective of the life and thought of the times was taken up by me for my doctoral desertation in 1966. Till then, it had hardly attracted the serious attention of Sanskrit scholars for a fully detailed indeper.dent study. In the course of my studies. I used to meet veteran scholars like Muni Shri Jinavijayaji, Muni Shri Punyavijayaji, Professor Rasiklal C. Parikh, Professor Dalsukhbhai Malavania, Dr. Harivallabh Bhayani, Dr. Hariprasad G. Shastri, and others to discuss various aspects of my studies. It was during one of our meetings with Professor Parikh that the idea of compiling the Critical Text of the Tilakamanjari crystallised when the revered scholar enquired of me as to the basic text on which I was going to rely upon for my critical study. But for this timely suggestion, I would have fallen into the usual groove of relying on a copy of the then available Printed text, edited by Pandit Bhavadatta Shastri of Ajmer and Kashinath Pandurang Parab and published by the Nirnaya Sagar Press, Bomby, in 1938 (Second Edition). and the Botad Edition of the TM with two commentaries, as has been done later on by some other Sanskrit scholars, who too have obtained their doctorate degrees from the Aligarh, the Kuruksnetra and the Vikrama Universities, on the basis of their literary and cultural study of the Tilakamañjari. Although my research guide, Dr. Arunoday N. Jani, had given to me a printed copy of the first Edition published by the Nirnaya Sagar Press, Bombay (1903), which was duly. corrected by Agama-prabhakara Muni Shri Punyavijayaji in consultation with Muni Shri Jinavijayaji and others in the early years of the current century, it could not be taken as the authentic critical text, according to Professor Parikh, for serious studies aimed at a doctorate degree. And Professor Parikh informed me further that he had almost undertaken the task of the Critical Edition of the Tilakamanjarı, himself, when his other commitments and old age left little time and energy for him to realise the dream; and he expressed a wish (in 1966) that young men like me (I was then in my thirty third year) should take up the work so that the critical study I had undertaken then would, and should be based on the solid foundation of the authentic text of the work. Immediately, I decided to finish the task of deter
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