मल्लपुराण (ज्येष्ठिमल्ल - प्राचीन भारतीय मल्लविद्या, अखाड़ा व्यायाम व कुश्ती महाग्रन्थ)

4
The present text, therefore, depends upon a manuscript and printed
version of the Mallapurāṇam.
The B. MS. is written in the Devanāgarī Script and does not differ much
from the contemporary writings. The usual mediaeval form of writing is seen the
presence of Ṣa. instead of Sa. Besides the avagraha is rarely used. The anusvāra
is commonly used for Na. Na is used for Ṇa. The irregularities of the use of
Śa and Sa is often noticed. Ba and Va are of same form. Some irregular sandhis
are noted. Wrong Śloka numbers are also seen. Generally the writing is chaste,
in metre and style. Occasionally local dialect is seen in a number of phrases¹,
and hence it betrays the place of origin of the text.
The printed book seems to have relied on a more or less complete MS.
It was published by Bāburāo², alias Vyaṅkaṭ Śarmā, the son of Govind alias
Minappā the son of Vyaṅkaṭ is Śaka 1833=1911 A. D. at Baroda. It was printed
by Jaṭāsaṅkar R. at Veerkshetra Press Co. Ltd.; near Chimanābāi Tower, Baroda.
The work was financed by Kāśībāi the daughter-in-law of Vyaṅkamā, the wife
of elder Vyaṅkaṭ. It was priced at Re. 1-00.
This book contains four works (1) Śukla Yajurvedīya Mādhyandin
Vājasaneya Āhnikam (2) Devamallotpatti (3) Moḍhbrāhmaṇotaptti (5) Malla-
purāṇam.
As already noted this is a more complete text of Mallapurāṇam. It is
noted as 'P'. 'B' comes to an end after the Chapter dealing with food, but
'P' is a more complete text. Hence after 9th Chapter the present edition
entirely relies on the printed text.
Necessary corrections are carried out in the text for making the spellings
uniform. It may further be noted that the two copies were complimentary as
they supplemented the missing data from each other. Still, however, these
manuscripts have many lacuna which can be easily seen in the discussion in
Chapter III, Chapter IV. Even the 41 arts as noted in Chapter VI are not
correctly recorded. In the Chapter X the list of middle type of exercises is
broken. The list of the exercises and lāgas is also defective. The same is the
case in the Chapter XI, XIV etc. All these lacuna suggest that an effort is
essential to trace other manuscripts of the work for completing parts of this text.
¹ The copyist of the MS. was probably not conversant with the subject-
matter and hence many mistakes. Partly they may be due to oversight,
carelessness and not comparing the copy with the original or he might have
copied from a defective text.
² Bāburāo Minappā still survives and lives in Hyderabad, Deccan and
works as Sitar Master. He was not a Government pahalwān.