Dear Colleagues
I have been working for a while on a short text variously ascribed to differently named authors, a text called Praśnottararatnamālikā / ºmālā. Several of the manuscripts I was able to obtain have interlinear commentaries (well, I understand them to be commentaries), but I cannot read them. I can live with that, but I'd at least like to know what language they are in.
One of them is in Harvard, and the catalogue information for this manuscript contains the following:
Interlinear commentary throughout the manuscript might be in old Hindi or Prakrit but Poleman has identified it as Gujarathi. The beginning and the end of the commentary is as follows, on [[facs=f1r, locus=f. 1r]] śrīgautamāya namaḥ namaskarī kevalī taṇatu svāmī tīrthaṁkara praśnottararatnamālāprakaraṇa bolisu . dānavamanuṣya devatāvaṁdanīka pūjya tathā deva māhi śrī mahāvīra and on [[facs=f4v, locus=f. 4v]] 28 nīpajāvī śvetāṁbara ācārye īṁ vimala īsaiṁ nāmi īṁ ūjhalī praśnottararatnamālā kaṁṭhirahi huṁtī puruṣa pratina tralakarīṁ api tu alaṁkarī īṁ 29 .
Another MS contains, for instance, near the beginning the following (I don't know how to split the words so I just transcribe as scripta continua as well as I can read it):
tehaniṁnamīniṁ praśnottaratnamālā nāma prakaraṇa kahispuṁ
Any advice would be appreciated, and with excuses in advance for my utter ignorance.
Jonathan
--
J. SilkLeiden UniversityLeiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
2311 BZ Leiden
The Netherlands
copies of my publications may be found at