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

5
Previous Work :
The Mallapurāṇa was published once as already noted above. Besides,
the references to Mallas and specially Jyeṣṭhimallas are found in various Sanskrit
and Gujarati works. These references are collected in a Gujarati booklet
“ Jyeṣṭhimalla jnāti Ane Mallapurāṇa ” by one of the editors, Dr. B. J.
Sandesara, published by Gujarat Vidya-Sabha in 1948 A.D. Another important
publication is by Shri B. Śrīnivasa Jetty of Bangalore, a booklet “ The Jetty
Community of South India and its migration from Modhera (North Gujarat) ”,
published in 1960 as a separate work. It originally appeared in the Journal of
the Mythic Society, Vol. L, No. 2. Dr. E. B. Kulkarni has given a short summary
of Mallapurāṇa in Oriental Conference 20th Session, at Bhuvaneswar.
The first two works give an outline of the history of the Jetty community
both in Gujarat and South India.
Another important publication is a Marathi work “ Badodyātīl Vyāyām
Vidyā ” by late Prof. Manikrao. The notes on Vajramuṣṭi form of exercises are
reported by Vyankappā in the Vyāyām Jñāna Kośa, both in Marathi and Guja-
rati are extremely useful.
Besides these works stray articles have been published recently, due to the
activity of the Jyeṣṭhimalla brothers Sītārāma and Laxmīnārāyana. They are
mainly instrumental in supplying useful data to the authors of these articles.
Date of Mallapurāṇa :
Mallapurāṇa, as has already been noted above, is a caste purāṇa and hence
it can be inferred that naturally it might have been written when most of the
caste-purāṇas were composed. These caste purāṇas are not written much prior
to the 12th century A.D. and the activity of writing them continued upto recent
times.
Looking to the literary phenomenon it could be expected that the present
work also should be written somewhere in this period. To close down this wide
chronological gap, strong evidence is supplied by the colophon of B.MS. which
states that it was copied down by Dunichandra in Saṁvat 1731-1674 A.D. This
statement suggests that the work is at least older than the 17th century A.D.,
but it is rather difficult to fix the upper limit.
This Purāṇa is unfortunately not listed by other purāṇas, so whatever
internal evidence could be gathered is utilised to fix its date in as small a time-
bracket as is possible.
The languages as mentioned in III.12-13 are Saṁskṛt, Prākṛt, Laukika and
Apabhraṁśa. If any inference is possible from this statement it means that
this work reflects the period when the Modern Indo-Aryan languages were used
besides Apabhraṁśa, Prākṛt and Saṁskṛt.

(Left margin caption to facing plate):
The last page of the Ms. B.—Bhāṇḍārkar Oriental Research Institute Collection, Poona.