GENERAL EDITOR'S FOREWORD Today I am placing in the hands of scholars the first part of Svayambhudeva's great Apabhramśa epic Paümacariu as the Thirty- fourth Volume of the Singhi Jain Series, and it is but natural for me to feel a sense of joy at seeing my long-cherished hope fulfilled at last in this form. It is commonly known among earnest scholars of Apabhramsa that among the very few precious jewels preserved to us from the vast literary treasures of Apabhramśa language, the present epic of Svayambhū occupies the foremost place. My atten- tion was drawn to the existence of this poem for the first time in 1919-1920 A.D. when, during my stay at Poona, I got the most pleasant opportunity of examining the rich Bombay Govern- ment collection of ancient MSS. which was formerly kept at the Deccan College and was shifted afterwards to the famous Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. At that time late Dr. P. D. Gune, who was among the chief founder-members of the Institute and who eventually became one of my most affectionate friends, was working as a very enthusiastic secretary of the B.O.R.I. He was also a keen student of Indian philology and hence one of the results of our contact was that his interest in the study and investigation of Apabhramśa became greatly sharpened. Once he read with me a few Sandhis from the beginning and end of the Paümacariu and also took down some notes with a view to prepare a short article on the subject, for the Annals of the B.O.R.I. During those days at Poona my learned Digambar Jain friend Pandit Nathuram Premi also used to visit me now and then and give me the pleasure of his company for several days, during which I received his enthusiastic co-operation in the research and publication of Jain literature. I drew his atten- tion also to the important Apabhramsa work of Svayambhū and he wrote a few informative lines on the Paümacariu too in his article 'Mahakavi Pușpadanta aur un-kā Mahāpurāņa which was published in the Jain Sähitya Samsodhak (July, 1923), then freshly started by me from Poona as a quarterly for bringing to light researches on Jain literature. In my Gujarati Foreword to the Paumasiricariu of Dhāhila Kavi, jointly edited by Professors M. C. Modi and H. C. Bhayani and published as the Twenty-fourth Volume of the present series, I have already outlined in short the course of progress achieved so far in the field of Apabhramsa studies, and it need not be repeated here. During the course of last forty years hundreds of Apabhramsa works, big and small, have been traced and many of them either have been or are being edited and made known to the public by various scholars, Indian as well as foreign.
