Descriptive Catalogue of Govt Collections of Manuscripts Part 3

Author(s): Hiralal R Kapadia
Publisher: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

Page 16

PREFACE
At the very outset it may be mentioned that since the publication of Part II of Volume XVII of Descriptive Catalogue of the Government Collections of Manuscripts, it has been decided that my work on Jaina Mss. is to be issued in three Volumes XVII, XVIII and XIX instead of two (XVII and XVIII) as settled in 1930 by Rao Bahadur Dr. S. K. Belvalkar, M.A., Ph.D., the then Hon. Superintendent of the Manuscript Department and the then Hon. Secretary of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. This is due to the fact that the original idea of publishing in one volume, all the descriptive sheets dealing with the Mss. of both the Ägamika Literature and the Dārśanika Literature could no longer be entertained owing to the material pertaining to the Agamika Literature alone, requiring practically an entire Volume to be devoted to it. This means a further change viz. that No. XIX originally assigned to a section styled as "Prakrit and Vernacular " henceforth represents Vol. XIX of "Jaina Literature and Philosophy", and that Vol. XX will deal with "Prakrit and Vernacular ".
It is a matter of great pleasure to mention that the publication of this Part III enables me to place in the hands of the scholars a further section pertaining to the Agamika Literature, some of the Mss. of which were described by me as far back as 1930 and of which the press-copy was handed over in 1933. It is thus after about nine years and a half since I commenced the work and seven years after the press-copy of the Agamika Literature (Ritualism included) was handed over to the press, that this Part III of Volume XVII comprising 530 pages, gets published.
Now a word about the procedure adopted here. As already stated in the Preface (pp. xiii-xiv) of Part I of this Volume XVII, the headings of description, the inter-arrangement of descriptive sheets having a bearing on the same text and the matter to be included in this Volume were decided by Dr. Belvalkar in 1933. I may note that the for bhale () was specially prepared when
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1 Vide "Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute Poona Report of 1935-36" (p. 14).