Outline of Avasyaka Literature

SR No.: 006911
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ernst Leumann, George Baumann
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 2010
Total Pages: 256
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 9 MB

Page 17

Introductory essay and tools by Nalini Balbir
with manuscripts kept in the Berlin Royal Library lead him to realize that the Avaśyaka-niryukti deserved attention (Übersicht p. IX). Later on, in 1893 (see below p. I), he returned to Berlin and again went through Jaina manuscripts which had entered the library after Weber completed the second volume of the Verzeichniss, and which were later catalogued in W. Schubring, Die Jaina-Handschriften (1944). Manuscripts needed for his studies were purchased from India by colleagues who were posted there or had toured the country, such as Georg Bühler or Peter Peterson in Bombay and Poona, or from Indian agents who procured manuscripts for Western scholars such as Bhagavāndās Kevaldās from Surat for Western Indian manuscripts, and Brahmasūri from Shravana Belgola for South Indian ones. Leumann also borrowed manuscripts from India and from libraries in the West with the help of enlightened librarians who were also scholars. The then India Office Library was one such repository. Leumann's polemic envolée (p. II) praising the liberal attitude towards the loan of manuscripts of Anglo-Indian libraries in sharp contrast with the libraries of England, which Schubring felt embarrassing (Foreword), is not untypical. His colleagues knew him as a strong character who did not hesitate to state what he thought in very clear terms. Such outbursts against Britain are not rare in the writings of a scholar who was also a strong German patriot and nationalist. Leumann's subsequent vivid plaidoyer in favour of developing copying projects in India or acquiring Jaina manuscripts from Indian libraries in a systematic and well-thought manner is also worthy of note.
One of the reasons Leumann needed so many manuscripts was precisely his holistic conception of the “Āvaśyaka-Literatur”. This explains partly why the Übersicht starts with a list of abbreviations with explanations referring to collections of manuscripts (p. IIIf.), and is followed by two lists (p. V-VIII). The second is a list of Svetāmbara manuscripts kept in Strasbourg. Their full description according to contemporary norms is available in C.B. Tripāthī, Catalogue of the Jaina Manuscripts at Strasbourg (Leiden, 1975). A concordance enables the reader to find the correspondence between Leumann's numbers and the serial numbers of the Catalogue. Not all the manuscripts in the list relate to the "Avaśyaka-literatur", and only some of them are mentioned in the book as it was published. The first of the two lists "L 129-225” (p. V) does not refer to manuscripts as such. It refers to Leumann's own extracts of manuscripts, notes, preliminary investigations, etc. as they are found in numerous blue notebooks, now part of his posthumous papers kept at the "Institut für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets” at the University of Hamburg, Germany (catalogue in Plutat 1998). Leumann used to copy extensively or selectively manuscripts that he borrowed from libraries or consulted during trips, to London, for instance, on the occasion of international conferences. In the absence of published catalogues he often had to create his own system of numbering. Moreover, references of the type "L + a number below 129" which are found in the course of the Übersicht concern two lists of notes, extracts, etc. found in unpublished notebooks, the contents of which are published in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 45 (1891): 454-464 (for items 1-90) and 47 (1893): 308-315 (for items 91-128), both reprinted in Plutat 1998 (99-118). This internally working system of references to
18 See below Appendix IV notes on p. I for more details on these scholars. 19 See my introduction to Leumann's Kleine Schriften for further examples of this attitude. 20 Tripāthī 1975: Appendix 1 Correspondence Table of Numbers : Leumann/ Serial Number of Entry, pp. 377-380. See Appendix III below for references relating to the main mss. used in the Übersicht.
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