34- Discovery of Abhisamayalamkara by Maitreyanatha 



Bv Mahamahopadhyaya Hakaprasada Shastri. 



Raja Rajendra Lala Mittra edited the Asta Sahasrika 

 Prajnaparamita from six manuscripts. I have also examined 



modern 



reigns 



precede 



of us, thought that the twenty-one verses are a part and parcel 

 of the work, but in 1907 when in Nepala I got a very dilapidated 

 old manuscript on palm-leaf of this work in which the prose is 



preceded by «fwlT^ TTS^f ^3W I This for the first time 



opened my eyes to the fact that the Prajnaparamitas are all 

 in prose, the verses are different works. But I wondered what 

 Rahula Bhadra's Krti could be. All previous leaves of this 

 manuscript were gone, and so I began to look more carefully and 



found four letters preceding the statement M af?rfT^ rr^^w^f " ' 



These letters are " ifirem " I And I found in R. Mittra's 



edition, those to be the last letters of the twentieth verse. So 

 the first twenty verses in Rajendra Lala Mittra's edition are a 

 work by Rahula Bhadra in praise of P. P. The twenty-first 



verse is a mere ' ^^fd ' and can be composed by any one but 



the author. 



This encouraged me to examine the manuscripts of other 

 recensions of Prajnaparamita, and I took up the Pancavinsati- 

 sahasrika Prajnaparamita, which, in Rajendra Lai's and Ben- 

 dall's descriptions, begin with verses. The verses continue 

 for many pages, and there are colophons indicating chapters. 

 That increased my wonder. It cannot be a hymn like that of 

 Rahula Bahadra, and I continued turning over the pages, till 



I came to the last colophon of the versified portion. *rfw 



^^•rrefe^^ ^fww*7T^fTTsn# w^nrfawtotir ^wfrsuro: i 



Then the prose began i& i^TT ^ff^rfgw W% ww* etc. 

 Evidently the versified work was ' l ^rf^ra^raT^f^C ,, which was 



designed for interpreting Prajnaparamita, and it was by Maitre- 

 yanatha. I turned over the leaves, and when I came to the 

 last leaf I found a statement to the effect that 25,000 Prajna- 

 paramita is a recast according to the teaching of Abhisamaya- 

 lamkara, and, according to the numbers of the chapters of that 



