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PREFACE
About two decades and a half ago the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute decided to publish the Descriptive Catalogue of Jaina manuscripts in two Volumes XVII and XVIII, and accord. ingly invited me in 1930 to prepare it. After I had worked on it for some months, it was realized that this original plan required a modification as the entire matter could not be accommodated in two volumes. Consequently it was spread over three volumes, the third being Vol. XIX.
The exigencies of the war may be one of the reasons for discontinuing the printing of Part IV of Vol. XVII for four years. This, coupled with the very slow progress in printing it, necessitated a further modification of the original plan. The portion comprising the nine appendices mentioned in my prefaces to Parts IĮ and III of Vol. XVII and presented here along with one more, had to be separated from Part IV and set apart as Part V.
It may appear a little strange that a decision taken in 1948 and noted in my Preface (p. xv ) of Part IV, to publish two parts of two different volumes as one whole, on the ground that they are not disparate-they all form part of the catalogue of Jaina Mss, and there is sufficient homogeneity of material to warrant their publication in one volume, has been subsequently set aside. But this is, of course, the result of an after thought based upon the following considerations :
(1) It creates an awkward position of compelling a reader to go through and a buyer to spend for a book containing two portions, though only one is presently needed by him.
(2) The number of printed pages of Part V has come out to be sufficiently big to be presented as a separate publication by itself.
(3) Even though a sufficient number of pages of Vol. XVIII sent to press in 1938 ) will be ready for being published as
