Western Discovery Of Jain Temple Libraries

Author(s): Donald Clay Johnson
Publisher: Donald Clay Johnson
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/269578/1

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The Western Discovery of Jain Temple Libraries Donald Clay Johnson The Jains, a small but influential religious group in India, highly revere the written word and over the centuries have amassed valuable manuscript libraries. During the nineteenth century the work of three Europeans and one Indian brought to light the depth and variety of materials assembled in the Jain temple libraries. Through their efforts, writings, and lists/catalogs of these collections, scholars both in India and in the West not only learned of the libraries but also borrowed manuscripts through an intercontinental interlibrary loan program sponsored by the Government of Bombay and the India Office Library Jainism, a religion that evolved in India contemporaneously with Buddhism in the sixth century B.C., remains to this day an influential force in Indian thought and culture. Although all religious groups in India revere their sacred texts, the Jains are unique in their respect for writing. One day of the Jain liturgical year is used to worship texts and one subgroup of Jains places texts rather than statues in its temples. In medieval India both Buddhists and Jains valued their written tradition so highly that libraries to house texts formed integral parts of temple complexes. In contrast, Hinduism followed the oral tradition and for much of its existence sacred texts were memorized rather than written. When written texts became more widely accepted within Hinduism, Brahmin priests and royal families collected texts far more actively than temples did. Thus, although a few Hindu temple libraries exist in India, the tradition of a wider dispersal of resources away from sacred centers evolved. Buddhism died out in India about the time of the Muslim incursions into the subcontinent a thousand years ago. Buddhist libraries, temples, and monasteries disappeared as the religion declined. Hence today the active tradition of temple libraries remains only among the Jains. What is the nature of these collections, and do they hold any potential for research and scholarship? Jain priests, in defining meritorious deeds for the lay community, did not confine such acts only to giving icons or wealth to temples. Texts held latten and whe, 28. Na 2. Speine 1993 OM by the Unity Press, PO 1819, Austin, TX 78713

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190 L&C/Jain Temple Libraries an extremely important position in Jainism since the religion had subdivided into numerous subgroups. Each such sect has its own sacred texts and the propagation of these writings is crucial for the survival of each distinct group. The lay community received encouragement to commission the copying of texts that would then be given either to monks or to temples.' Jain monks, however, must spend their lives traveling from Jain community to Jain community, and they do not have any permanent abode, Manuscripts given to them realistically could not be retained since the monks could not carry any significant number of texts on their travels. Consequently, temples became the focus for the receiving of texts. Jains have always been prominent in the economic life of India and possess the financial ability to support temples and temple libraries on a significant scale. Monks were not averse to telling lay members of their needs for texts, and the faithful responded with so much financial support that over time certain Jain temples amassed extraordinary holdings of extremely old and rare manuscripts. Since the manuscripts were part of a religious complex, their physical preservation received great care and attention, a feature that subsequently made them of particular interest to Europeans. Also assisting the preservation of the manuscripts was the fact they were not intensively used, for the chief users of Jain temple libraries were monks, a modest number of individuals. Given the active scholarly and religious life of monks, they insured that the libraries also included writings and texts of other religions. The libraries thus were not confined to Jain subjects, but included many titles from other religions, especially Hinduism. An incomparable treasure of Sanskrit literature awaited discovery by Europeans. Were these materials of interest at all to scholars in the West? Sir William Jones's shocking discovery in 1786 that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin had interrelationships that were too close for coincidence and that Sanskrit had to be the oldest of the three languages, being "more perfect than the Greek and more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either," spurred European scholars into rethinking the history and evolution of languages. The resulting scholarly inquiry testing Jones's observations, particularly by German-speaking scholars, led to the establishment of linguistics as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century. The chief impediment to research was the limited number of Sanskrit texts in Europe, for Sanskrit during the nineteenth century remained overwhelmingly an unpublished language. Only through its manuscript tradition did Europeans have a chance to conduct their inquiries into Sanskrit literature. Either scholars had to go to India, hoping they would be allowed to consult works, or somehow Sanskrit manuscripts had to come to Europe. During the late eighteenth century Great Britain eliminated French in 191 fluence in India and rose during the nineteenth century to become the paramount power in the subcontinent. The tension between a scholarly movement based in German universities, with its need for Sanskrit manuscripts, and Britain, the most powerful force in India, produced a situation in which research materials had to be supplied to Europeans without appearing to devolve or reduce British influence or power. Complicating the situation was the perception of the Government of India, after the Mutiny of 1857, that it had a greater interest in Indian civilization and its preservation. Massively shipping manuscripts to Europe to enrich libraries there clearly was not the best course of action. There was, however, a more basic consideration. While Britain was the preeminent power in India, this did not guarantee that government officials even knew where to find Sanskrit manuscripts or which titles, even if they did find an extensive library, had research value. Learning which Jain temples had outstanding collections and then gaining access to them was a laborious process that continues to the present day. Fortunately, the writings of a group of individuals in India during the nineteenth century record the initial efforts to learn of Jain manuscript libraries. This record forms an important chapter in the history of libraries in India. The British rise to dominance of India was an ongoing process and not the result of a single battle or war. This evolution of control continued until the Mutiny of 1857, when administrative policy changed and the British made no further additions to their territory. The subcontinent thus contained British India as well as Princely India, over 500 states or kingdoms that in theory controlled their own destinies, but in reality usually had to follow British wishes. Western India, where the largest and most famous Jain libraries are, was primarily Princely India; of the three most prominent Jain temple libraries, only the Shantinath Temple in Cambay resided in British territory. The Oswal Jain collection of Jaiselmer was part of the realm of the Maharaval of Jaiselmer, a Rajput prince, and the largest and most famous collection, the Hemachandra Bhandar in Patan, was in the dominion of the Gaekwar of Baroda, one of the most influential of the Maratha chieftains. Although relations between British India and the princes usually were cordial, interference in the affairs of Princely India was not encouraged. Any effort to investigate Jain temple libraries in Princely India would not be easy, and efforts to intervene on the libraries' behalf would be impossible. The first account of the potential importance of Jain temple libraries to Western scholarship came from Col. James Tod, the famous chronicler of the Rajputs. In his 1839 Travels in Western India he described a visit that he and his guru had made to Patan, where his guru saw the Hemachandra Bhandar. Tod himself did not enter the famous library and unfortunately did not indicate why he failed to do so. However, in 1839, the year Panizzi

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192 L.&ClJain Temple Libraries published his ninety-three rules for the cataloging of the library of the Brit. ish Museum, this temple collection in a remote part of India had evolved many of the characteristics of modern libraries. The library belonged to one of the Jain gacchas, or subsects, but since it was so important, administrative control of it resided with the chief merchant nagarseth) of Patan and the city council (panch). Day-to-day care of the collection fell to priests who practiced the tradition of Hemacharya. The reverence Jains felt for their manuscripts rather than actual consultation, study, and use of them seems to have played a great role in the guru's ability to enter the library, Tod describes the access procedures his guru followed and hints at the extent of the collection: On the very day of our arrival, he the guru hastened to "worship the Bindar." Although his venerable appearance was quite enough to make the padlocks fly open, nothing could be done without the fiat of the Nagar-Seth. The council was convened, before whom my Yuti produced his patrovali, or spiritual pedigree, tracing his descent from Hemacharya himself, which acted like a spell, and he was invited to descend and worship the treasures of ages. The catalogue forms a large volume, and I should fear to hazard my own veracity, or that of my Guru by giving his estimate, from its contents of the number of books which filled these chambers. They are carefully packed in cases, filled up with the dust of the mud, or Caggerwood, an infallible preservative against insects. But there was a want of correspondence between the catalogue and the contents of the boxes, forty of which he examined in seeking for two works named therein. The excessive closeness of the subterrene atmosphere compelled him to de sist from the search, which he did the more readily, as he was promised permission to copy any work he desired on his return." Tod's failure to describe what constituted a catalog prevents us from gaining an insight into the organizational principles the Jains followed, and we must be careful not to apply today's meaning of the word to 1839. With no hint of author, title, or subject given, we do not know what strategies the guru followed unsuccessfully to find the two desired titles. The care for the physical preservation of the manuscripts clearly appears, however, which allowed them to remain in existence for centuries. The intriguing phrase "the excessive closeness of the subterrene atmosphere" raises several questions about the role and importance of the library. The underground location undoubtedly reflects the desire to have the library as part of the temple complex, but not one that could easily be visited by most people who came to the temple. The Jaiselmer collection to this day re Palm leaf manuscripts and their protective cars and cloth. (Photo by author

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194 L&CI Jain Temple Libraries 195 mains in such an underground site. Excessive closeness indicates crowded conditions, a problem shared with many modern libraries. In his concluding remarks describing the library, Tod pointed out that there was even a circulation policy. Members of the gaccha who lived within a certain distance of the temple could take manuscripts from the library for ten days. The collection clearly had evolved many characteristics that define libraries today. These include an administrative structure, defined eligibility requirements for users, a catalog, a circulation policy, and elaborate preservation techniques for the manuscripts. The final discussion on the importance of the library suggested that not only the Hemachandra Bhandar was useful to scholarship, but also the Oswal Jain temple library in Jaiselmer. Clearly Tod knew the dilliculties that awaited anyone who wanted to see these bhandars. "Extreme caution and delicacy must be observed in the attempt; the use of anything like power might seal every volume for ever, for the deposit is scrupulously guarded and only known to the initiated."* Time after time others who subsequently tried to see these, as well as other, Jain temple libraries learned how hard it would be to gain access. While Tod's writing alerted Europeans to the existence of Jain temple libraries, thirty years passed before anyone else pursued his discovery. The reawakening of activity occurred as the result of a most enlightened piece of Government of India legislation passed in November 1868, which provided annual funds for the collection and the preservation of Sanskrit manuscripts.' Bombay Presidency luckily had just the person to transform this modest program into an internationally known effort to retrieve and document the literary heritage of India. The Jain contribution to Indian culture formed a major part of this effort and could only be investigated by using Jain temple libraries. Georg Buhler came to Bombay in 1862 to become the first professor of Sanskrit at Elphinstone College of the University of Bombay. Having served previously in both the Royal Library at Windsor Castle and the University of Gottingen Library, he combined impeccable scholarly credentials with a librarian's awareness of the need to develop well-balanced collections to support all aspects of research. It did not take long for Buhler to come to the attention of the Government of Bombay. In 1864 it appointed him to a special committee charged with the compilation of a digest of Hindu law to assist the justice department in various legal matters. To complete his work he soon let it be known that he was willing to purchase relevant Sanskrit manuscripts. As Buhler gained the respect of the Indian community, numerous individuals assisted in his quest for titles. Promotion came in 1866 when Buhler became acting superintendent of Sanskrit studies and professor of ancient history and English at Deccan College, Poona. Further acknowledgment of his abilities came when the Government of Bombay asked him to undertake a search in the southern part of the area for Sanskrit manuscripts. This was the second such search for manuscripts to acquire titles to develop and to maintain Sanskrit research in the colleges and universities of Bombay Presidency. In 1866 Buhler and Franz Kielhorn began the Bombay Sanskrit Series, one of the preeminent nineteenth-century scholarly series that produced basic editions of Sanskrit texts. In 1868 he received another promotion, this time to the post of educational inspector for the northern portion of Bombay Presidency. The post, stationed in Surat, required his traveling throughout the towns and villages of the area to inspect schools. Thanks to his fluency in Sanskrit, he greatly impressed scholars in the towns and villages and offers of manuscripts constantly came to him. Thus it does not seem strange that, upon appointment as one of two people in Bombay to implement the 1868 Government of India act, Buhler went on his first such search trip in December, just one month after passage of the law. His finds and purchases of Jain manuscripts developed so rapidly that he could report in 1872 that the Jain collection he had assembled, supplemented by 3,000 manuscripts listed in a subsidiary program to catalog the contents of libraries, was the largest known repository of information on the Jains in a public collection. Although most of what is now Gujarat was Princely India in Buhler's time, the inclusion in British India of port cities and major trading centers meant that many Jain temples were located in areas open to him. He recorded in his search report for 1872-1873 that he visited collections in the cities of Cambay, Limdi, and Ahmedabad." The treasures and challenges he faced point out differences in what Jain and Western libraries perceive as their mission: The extent and the condition of these libraries prevent me from causing complete 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 Ahmedabad contains 400 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 superintendents of monasteries for copying books, and that the multiplication of sacred writings is held to be highly meritorious. To make complete catalogues of such libraries is out of the question.' In Cambay he managed to see a manuscript written in A.1). 1278, which pointed out the great age of some of the manuscripts. At the conclusion of his report for the year, he noted with pleasure "copies of all the forty-live

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196 L&ClJain Temple Libraries sacred works of the Jainas, with the exception of three very small treatises, have now been obtained, and Sanskrit commentaries on most of them." Thanks to the efforts of others, Buhler's search horizons were soon to expand tremendously. In 1872 Alexander Cunningham, director general of the Archaeological Survey of India, drew to the attention of the Govern ment of India Tod's 1839 remarks about the vast potential of Rajputana libraries to yield significant titles. He also added his personal experience: "in the great fortress of Bhatner I have myself seen a room 10 or 12 feet long, and about 6 feet broad, half filled with manuscripts, fastened up in the Native way in red cloth, and piled one on another to a height of about 4 feet. From amongst the top ones I selected a palm-leaf manuscript bearing the date of Samvat 1200 (A.D. 1142]."' The Government of India responded by allowing Buhler to extend his searches into Princely India." Buhler made his first such trip to Rajputana from December 1873 to March 1874, accompanied by Hermann Jacobi, a German scholar then on a private trip to India. Unquestionably the highlight of the trip was Jaiselmer, where, after considerable effort and with the assistance of the Maharaval, the two were allowed to enter the library of the Oswal Jain temple. This collection, in large measure, derived from an effort of the Jain community to preserve its written tradition at the time of the Muslim invasions of India. They selected the remote desert city of Jaiselmer for this purpose and transferred many texts to the temple they founded there. While the collection was smaller than Buhler had anticipated, the treasures it contained far exceeded his expectations; halfway through his stay in Jaiselmer, he sent a preliminary report, subsequently published in the Indian Antiqtary. Particularly noteworthy was a manuscript dated A.1). 1103, then the oldest-known manuscript in all of India. Also included in the library were Hindu Brahmanical manuscripts from the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The two visitors received permission to copy any titles they wanted, and while at the library they personally copied two works and left orders for twenty-eight others to be copied. However, Buhler subsequently reported that only four of these additional titles were ever copied and sent to him. Jaiselmer had several other temple and personal libraries that the two scholars also consulted. Jacobi, who had just completed his doctoral degree in Germany, spent most of the rest ol his academic life investigating aspects of Jain culture and civilization and wrote extensively on the subject. Having gained access to one of the two most famous Jain temple librar ies in Princely India, there remained the challenge of seeing the other. Here Buhler failed, despite several attempts. The first try came in November 1873 while he was on his way to Jaiselmer. Although he had letters of introduction from various officials of the Baroda court, no collection in Patan was shown to him. He returned to Patan in March 1874 at the end of 197 his Rajputana trip with a letter from Sir Lewis Pelly, the British Resident to the Baroda court. The excuse for inaction at this time was that the chief officials of the city as well as the keeper of the Hemachandra Bhandar were away on leave. In May 1874 Buhlerlearned that the keeper had returned to Patan, and in the midst of the Indian summer he braved sandstorms and thunderstorms to plead his case to see the famous library. The keeper showed him some dilapidated paper manuscripts, thinking this would get rid of the foreigner. Buhler quickly realized that this could hardly be the foundation of such a famous library and pressed his case. The man appeared to give in and showed him 600 to 700 more manuscripts, but none of the treasures that others had indicated were in the collection. Although Buhler continued to press further, he saw nothing more and returned to Surat disappointed. He raised the issue once again with Baroda court of ficials, who intervened on his behalf and produced a breakthrough. The library keeper changed his mind and, as a gesture of good faith, allowed Buhler's agent in the city to see the entire library. The agent wrote Buhler that he saw forty boxes filled with rare manuscripts. While Buhler should have rushed to Patan, he had just been given permission by the Government of India to make a ten-month search trip to Kashmir. The opportunity missed at the Hemachandra became a lost chance as subsequent writings of Buhler give no indication that he ever entered the most famous of all the Jain temple libraries in Patan. The manuscripts purchased or copied on the search trips were, by law, to remain in India. Scholars in the West learned of the great finds of Buhler through the printed lists of acquired titles that the Government of India distributed both in India and abroad. Knowledge of these new discoveries prompted the desire to see them, and within a year of the initiation of the search program for Sanskrit manuscripts the Government of Bombay began sending titles to scholars in India, Europe, and the United States. Unfortunately, detailed records were not kept for the loans within India. Since far more work was necessary to send manuscripts from India, records were kept for these transactions. The program of intercontinental lending of manuscripts lasted from 1869 to 1913, during which time 791 manuscripts were sent to scholars in the West. As its basic arrangement the Government of Bombay sent the titles to the India Office Library in London, which then sent the manuscripts to a library in Europe or the United States where the scholar who requested them could consult the works. From time to time, however, manuscripts went directly from the India Office Library to an individual. When this happened the individual had to place an indemnity bond before receiving the manuscripts. German-speaking scholars dominated nineteenth-century Sanskrit scholarship, as might be expected, they requested most of the titles in this intercontinental lending program. German scholars of the Jains borrowed

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199 EL LLLLLLLL MORETETTEKTET almost half of the manuscripts sent to Germany and Austria, a clear indication of how much the searches for Sanskrit manuscripts in Bombay zuided scholarship on the Jains. Altogether, scholars who wrote on Jain topis borrowed 270 of the 547 manuscripts sent to scholars in the two counTries. Ernst Leumann at Strassburg headed the list with 96 manuscripts borrowed. The next three scholars who borrowed the largest number of tiiles also wrote on Jain topics: Johannes Hertel, Dobeln (46): Georg Buhler, Vienna (45): and Hermann Jacobi, Bonn (36). Clearly, the groundbreaking work of Buhler in discovering the heritage of the Jains assisted international scholarship While the 1868 act decreed that the manuscripts acquired in the program were to remain in India, the Government of India did allow Buhler, upon special request, to purchase duplicates of manuscripts for libraries in the West. During his career in India Buhler received five such requests, four of which related to Jain manuscripts. The first came in 1873 when the Konigliche Bibliothek in Berlin asked for his help. Although the request did not specify Jain manuscripts, a published letter from Jacobi indicates that Jain titles formed part of the shipment. A year later, in 1874, the Asiatic Society of Bengal specifically asked for some Jain works. However, during the time required to secure Government of India permission to do this work, the society lost interest in the project and nothing further happened. In 1875 E. B. Cowell sought Buhler's help to enrich the Cambridge University Library holdings of Jain Agama literature. The last request came from the Oxford professor Sir Monier Monier-Williams, who asked him in 1875 for some Jain titles. Buhler retired from government service in 1881, returned to Vienna, where he joined the Oriental Institute, and published works on the Jains until his untimely death in a boating accident in 1898. His successor in the scarch work in Bombay was Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, a remarkable Indian trained in Western scholarly methods, who enjoyed the same international respect Buhler did, and today is probably best remembered for the prominent research institute in Poona named in his honor. Although Bhandarkar soon changed his search assignment to the southern, or Marathi-speaking, areas of Bombay Presidency so that he could utilize his mother tongue in search work, he did continue Buhler's quest in Gujarat. His very first scarch report encouragingly announced that the treasures of Gujarat are inexhaustible and there is every prospect of getting a large number of manuscripts every year for many years to come. It is not unlikely we may get more palm-leaf manuscripts even." In 1883 Bhandarkar visited Patan for one week and managed to see six of the eleven Jain libraries he had earlier identified for survey. His report points out changes that had occurred in the administration of Jain temple libraries since Tod's time. First, the libraries were no longer administered Blondeer, Padan win. Je Hender

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200 L&C Jain Temple Libraries 201 by the Nagarseth and the Panch, but rather by prominent members of the temple that owned the library. Second, administration of a temple library from time to time went to individual monks. Although Jain monks were to have no home and to spend their lives constantly traveling throughout the Jain community, Bhandarkar observed that this tradition was changing, and from time to time a monk would settle at a particular temple. When this happened the monk, for all practical purposes, took complete charge of the library. Third, Bhandarkar learned that libraries were not always located in the temple proper. When monks assumed control of libraries, they frequently had them moved into the living quarters that each temple complex reserved for monks and religious pilgrims. When Bhandarkar assumed responsibility for the searches for Sanskrit manuscripts in the southern portion of Bombay Presidency, Peter Peterson, registrar of Bombay University and professor of Sanskrit, took charge of the northern. Peterson traveled widely in both Rajputana and Gujarat; his reports of his activities both reaffirm Tod's impressions and point out the difficulties in possessing such valuable collections of manuscripts. These problems centered on the Shantinath Temple in Cambay, and his account reads much like those of archaeologists as they made their great discoveries. Tod told of the underground room that contained the Patan manuscripts. The same was true in Cambay: "the books are kept in a dark underground vault, on stepping out of the light into which you can see nothing that in the least suggests the real character of the place. As the eye becomes accustomed to the darkness, a hole in the wall is seen, which is the entrance into the smaller and darker vault where the books are kept. We gathered below the one window which from above lets light into the strange place, and the keeper of the books grudgingly handed out one after another for our inspection."18 The manuscripts were carefully stored in numbered boxes. When Peterson returned to Bombay and examined his notes of the titles, and collated the numbers of the boxes he had seen, he learned there were gaps in the sequence. Two years later he returned to Cambay in order to see the boxes not shown to him earlier. However, he met with a very different situation, for the keeper of the library adamantly denied there were any more boxes. But then the keeper "came to me [Peterson) by night to discover if he could perchance make himself rich, and secure a Government appointment for his son, by making over to me books which by day he knew nothing about."19 Peterson wisely decided not to become involved in such a situation and returned to Bombay. Soon he learned the Jain community had grown suspicious of the keeper's activities and charged him with a lawsuit; the presiding judge had impounded the entire library until a trial could be held. The judge, knowing of Peterson's work on the collection, asked him if he wished to consult the library previous to the trial. Peterson rushed to Cambay to study the manuscripts he had not been able to see on his earlier visits. In 1893 Peterson finally visited Patan and attempted to see the Hemachandra Library. Like Buhler and Bhandarkar, he too was unsuccessful The resistance among certain Jain groups to outsiders' learning of the contents of their temple libraries amply fulfilled Tod's earlier observation. Peterson reported that the keepers of several of the Jain libraries simply left Patan when they learned he was coming, so that they would be unable to meet him. At the Hemachandra, however, more drastic action was taken. Peterson found that the keeper there before leaving had not only locked the door of the treasure he loves too well, but to make assurance double sure, had run up a brick wall in front of it." It was senseless to try to continue the quest, and only at the end of the twentieth century has the Hemachandra Bhandar been more freely accessible to Western scholars. The remarkable program to search for Sanskrit manuscripts initiated by the Government of India in 1868 had several reviews of activities during the subsequent decades. Each time the individuals who undertook the searches were able to convince appropriate authorities that the project was not yet complete, and the Government of India continued funding their work. This situation could not go on forever, and, ironically, it was the viceroy with the greatest interest in India's civilization who dealt the death blow to the program. Lord Curzon, viceroy from 1898 to 1905, summarily announced that the searches were a provincial and not a central government concern and turned over sponsorship of the program to the various states and presidencies.? In Bombay the great fame of the amassed collection of over 20,000 manuscripts allowed a plea to be made for modest funds to maintain the collection. The Government of India relented in this one aspect only and provided 3,000 rupees a year for maintenance of the collection. Of course, one laments the death of the program. While such an event is indeed sad, the remarkable thing is that there ever was a program to search for and to preserve Sanskrit manuscripts. Current nationalist scholarship takes great delight in charging that Britain raped India of its wealth. While there is no denying that Britain benefited from its administration of India, activities such as the searches for Sanskrit manuscripts and, far more prominently, the work of the Archaeological Survey of India show that the Government of India also worked most actively to preserve the cultural heritage of India. Such work began in the nineteenth century, long before governments in the West felt it was their responsibility to sponsor such cultural work. Had there been no Tod, Buhler, Bhandarkar, or Peterson, how much would we know of the literary heritage of the Jains, or more importantly, how many of the written documents of the Jains would have been lost?

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202 L&C/Jain Temple Libraries 203 Thanks to the work of these four men, scholars in the West not only learned of the rich Jain contribution to Indian civilization, but also gained access to the primary source materials to undertake systematic research and reveal the depth, breadth, and importance of the Jain heritage. The Jains continue to amass temple libraries and are meticulous in their work to preserve their books and manuscripts. Learning of the great value and interest Western scholars had in their temple libraries undoubtedly served to strengthen the effort of the Jains to preserve their heritage. NISS in the Bombay Circle, 1884/86," Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Bombay Branch, Journal, extra number 1887: 25. 20. Peter Peterson, "Detailed Fourth Report of Operations in Search of Sanskrit MSS in the Bombay Circle, 1886/92" Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Bombay Branch, Journal, extra number 1894: 2. 21. Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department Proceedings, 30 July 1904, no. 4862A. Notes 1. An excellent overview of the evolution of gists of texts to Jain temples is found in "Manuscript Tradition," Marg, A Magazine of the Arts 36, no. 3 (1983): 25-30. 2. Sir William Jones, "Third Anniversary Discourse, Delivered 2 February 1786," Asiatic Researches 1 (1788): 423-424. 3. James Tod, Travels in Western India: Embracing a Visit to the Sacred Mounts of the Jains and the Most Celebrated Shrines of Hindu Faith between Rajputana and the Indus, with an Account of the Ancient City of Nehrwalla (Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1971), pp. 233-234. 4. Ibid., pp. 234-235. 5. Government of India, Home Department, Public Proceedings, 3 November 1868, nos. 4338-4348. 6. Bombay Education Department, Proceedings, 19 October 1866, no. 25. 7. Archibald Edward Gough, Papers Relating to the Collection and Preservation of the Records of Ancient Sanskrit Literature in India, edited by Order of the Government of India by Archibald Edward Gough (Calcutta: Government Printing Office, 1878), p. 83. 8. Ibid., p. 100. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., p. 103. 11. Government of India, Archaeological Survey of India, Proceedings, 17 April 1872, no. 15. 12. Government of India, Home Department, Public Proceedings, 23 December 1872, no. 4770. 13. Georg Buhler, "Miscellanea and Correspondence," Indian Intiquary 3 (1874): 89-90. 14. Gough, Papers, p. 129.. 15. Johannes Klatt, "Die Jaina-Handschriften der K. Bibliothek zu Berlin," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morganlandische Gesellschaft 33 (1879): 478-483. 16. Government of India, Home Department, Public Proceedings, December 1882, nos. 38-39. 17. Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, "Extracts from the Report on the Searci for Sanskrit Manuscripts during the Year 1883-84," in Collected Works, 4 vols. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1928), vol. 2, p. 58. 18. Peter Peterson, "Detailed Report of Operations in Search of Sanskrit MSS in the Bombay Circle, August 1882-March 1883," Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Bombay Branch, Journal, extra number 1883: 57. 19. Peter Peterson, "Detailed Third Report of Operations in Search of Sanskrit 0 .