कान्हड़दे प्रबन्ध (कवि पद्मनाभ - जालोर चौहान वीरगाथा, अलाउद्दीन खिलजी से युद्ध व जौहर इतिहास)

INTRODUCTION 11 The script is Brahmanical Devanāgarī of the Marwāḍi type. It is clear and firm. It does not use the paḍīmātrā or the side- mātrā, which is a characteristic of the Jaina Devanāgarī. The manuscript is written on paper of a very inferior quality. Sometimes, on account of this, the scribe had to allow half the side of a page to remain blank (vide folio 5). The ᴍs is not well-preserved either. The pages are soiled, perhaps on account of dampness, and have been damaged at places by insects. The edges have suffered due to careless handling, and on folio 18 the writing at the corners has thus disappeared. Inspite of this the ᴍs has been very valuable for fixing the text. It is the oldest dated ᴍs, belonging to the same century as the poet. It was copied in Jhalor, the poet's native place, where it was possible that the copyist had access to the author's autograph copy or an immediate copy of it. I have, therefore, given due weightage to this ᴍs, and considered it most reliable in the constitution of the text. Ms B, No. 1541 of 1891–95 in the collection of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, is in the form of a pothi, stitched on the left-hand side, which is rather unusual. The ᴍs contains (1) the Karṇalīlāvilāsa of Sūradāsa, (2) the Kānhaḍade Prabandha of Padmanābha, and (3) the Raṇamallachanda of Śrīdhara Vyāsa, in that order. On the first page and after the Karṇalīlāvilāsa some medical formulae are copied out. The ᴍs covers in all 59 folios of which 47 are occupied by the Kānhaḍade Prabandha. The folios are not numbered, but counting the opening folio of the ᴍs as 1, the Kānhaḍade Prabandha starts on folio 8 verso, and concludes on folio 55 verso. Each folio measures about 8" by 4.6". There is a margin of .4" both on the right and the left, marked off by a double line usually in black and sometimes in red ink. The margins at the top and the bottom of the page are .3" wide. On the first 20 sides there are, generally, 13 lines per page; the remaining pages have usually 14 lines per page, except 18 sides— most of them in the latter part of Khaṇḍa III and in Khaṇḍa IV— which have 15 lines per page. The last page, where the poem ends, has 16 lines. The number of letters per line varies from 28 to 36, the average being about 32 letters per line. Neither the title of the poem nor the folio-numbers are written in the margins.