304 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY. [October, 1873. MISCELLANEA. DR. BUHLER’S REPORT ON SANSKRIT MSS. IN GUJARAT. AVe extract the following from Dr. Bidder's Re¬ port for 1872-73 to the Director of Public Instruc¬ tion :— Two new fascicles, Nos. III. and IV., of t-liis work have been published during the past year. Tho materials collected in 1868-09 have now been exhausted. The issue of a supplementary number, giving addonda, indices, etc. is still required. This part, as well as a fascicle of the catalogue of Jaina works, is still in preparation. Several large collections of Jaina books in Cambay, Limdi, and Ahmadabad have been partly catalogued. The extent and the condition of these libraries prevent me, however, from causing com¬ plete lists of their contents to be made. Several of them contain upwards of 10,000 manuscripts, and sometimes hundreds of copies of one and the same work are found in one library. Thus a library at Ahmad&bad contains, according to the statement of the cataloguing Shastri, four hundred copies of the Avasyakasutra. This assertion will appear neither astonishing nor incredible if it is borne in mind that devout Jainas frequently give or bequeath large sums of money to the superin¬ tendents of monasteries for copying books, and that the multiplication of the sacred writings is held to be highly meritorious. To make complete catalogues of such libraries is out of the question. In the course of 1873-74 I hope to finish the exploration of two out of the three large Jaina libraries at Ahmadab&d and of those at Vadhvan, and to begin with the BhandhtLrs at Siddhapur Patlian. But I despair of finishing ray task during either the current or the next following year. During the period under report I have bought or procured copies of 200 manuscripts, out of which number 7o belong to Brahmanical litera¬ ture and 123 to the Jainas, while 2 contain famous Gujar&ti prose-works. Among the Brah¬ manical works there aro several novelties and rare works, to which I beg to call spocial attention. Thus No. 2, the Bh­a on the Mantras, quoted in the Paraskara-grihya-sfitra (I. II. 3) of tho White Yajurveda, attempts a task which is usually neglected by the writers on Vedic ceremonies, and it is, at all events, highly interesting to see what meaning a Brahminical writor attributed to the prayers which the Bhattas usually mutter without understanding or caring to understand them. Among the Puranas the Vahnipurana is new to me. It is not identical with the Agni- pnrara. The Sarasvatipuram is a complete copy of the fragment noticed in last year’s report. The list of manuscripts of poetical works con¬ tains several original compositions and commen¬ taries, which I have not seen mentioned elsewhere. The most important among them are the Yrihat- kath& of Kshemendra and the Parthapar&krama. The honour of the first discovery of the former work belongs to A. Burnell, Esq., M.C.S., not to myself (as stated in the Indian Antiquary). But the copy in my list appears to be the only other known manuscript besides that of Mr. Burnell, and, though incomplete, it contains very import¬ ant portions of the original, which are wanting in that gentleman’s manuscript. In an article iu the Indian Antiquary I have pointed out how great the importance of the Vrihatkatha is for the history of the Indian collections of apologues. I may add that further researches have convinced me that it settles completely the question which of the many versions of the Panchatantra is the original one, and that it allows us to ascer¬ tain the form of that work as it stood in the 4th century a.d. The Panchatantra, at that period, closely resembled the so-called Southern redaction. The second work mentioned above, the Partlia- par&kraina, is a drama of the class called Vyayoga, a military piece celebrating the deeds of Arjuna. Its author, the Yuvaraja or heir-apparent Prah- l&dana, who lived under a king of the name of Dli&r&varsha, is quoted by S&rangadhara, the author of a large collection of elegant extracts made in the 14th century. King Dh&ravarsha, from whose unnamed capkal the mountain Nandivardhana could be seen, lived probably in the 10th century a. d. The play is important, as only one other Vy&yoga was hither¬ to known. The manuscript was found in a Jaina library. Among the works pertaining to the Sh&stras, the Agnivesasaiiihita, one of the oldest works on medi¬ cine, written in the Sdtra style, and the Visranta- vidy&vinoda, a work on veterinary surgery attri¬ buted to King Bhoja, deserve to be noted specially- The latter work is different from the short popular treatise usually called Salihotra, and attributed likewise to the famous king of Malwa. As regards the Jaina books, I stated already in last year’s report that the purchases of 1872-73 promised to become highly important. My hopes in this respect have been completely fulfilled. I have obtained some very old palm-leaf manu¬ scripts, Nos. 78-80, 113-114, 128-132, which are all between five and six hundred years old. The
