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

INTRODUCTION 33 It is difficult for me to express in words my deep debt of gratitude to Ācārya Muni Śrī JINAVIJAYAJI, the doyen of Sanskrit, Prākrit, Old Western Rājasthānī, and Jainistic studies in India. It was he who inspired me to undertake this study and helped me gene- rously at every stage. The successful completion of the work in its present form and its publication in ‘Rājasthān Purātana Granthamālā’ is entirely due to his encouragement and generous help. This volume is now complete—a result of 14 years of rather exacting labour, and I am glad that it was not completed earlier. The successive collations I had to prepare made it possible for me to bring the final form of the constituted text as near, I hope, to the archetype as possible. I could also thereby avail myself of the opportunity to apply the recognized principles of textual criticism to the problem of restoring old texts in the Indian languages to their original form and to modify and alter these principles where necessary, to suit the peculiar circum- stances of the Indian languages. I have, thus, attempted to develop the methodology of textual criticism in relation to early texts in the Indian languages. This volume comprises the text and the criticism relative to it. The next volume, which will shortly follow, will discuss the historical and linguistic background of the work, give a complete translation of the poem and a full Index Verborum, with, if possible, critical and explanatory notes. I have not spared myself in making this study as thorough and accurate as possible, but it is for scholars to judge how far I have succeeded. Elphinstone College, Bombay. K. B. VYAS 16-7-1953. 3