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.
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