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FOREWORD
acknowledges the worth of the present book which it calls “an important new publication on Jainism” that “should make the understanding of the Karman doctrine easier". Indeed it requires more than an ordinary acumen to find out from an even string of Gāthas the leading lines of a whole system, to co-ordinate and subordinate them according to their importance and consequence, and to marshal the details into their respective quarters. It needs a will to conquer in order to enter upon tasks of this kind, not unlike the entering of a forest in a dark continent, possibly untrodden by human foot, bristling with technical terms, unexplained, yet full of settled meaning, often enough not to be derived from etymology. The enthusiasm and love of a research scholar is required for trying one's strength at such problems with the likely, but by no means certain, prospect of pushing the limits of our knowledge at least a little further back into the vast realm hitherto unknown and unexplored. May the English edition of " The Doctrine of the Karman in Jain Philosophy" meet with the same success in India, its spiritual home, the German one has met with in a foreign land.
St Xavier's College, Bombay,
May 15, 1921.
R. ZIMMERMANN, S.J.
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