Jain Journal 1971 10

SR No.: 520024
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1971
Total Pages: 45
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 3 MB

Page 13

OCTOBER, 1971
and Jainism section of the twentyfirst session of the All-India Oriential Conference which had met at Srinagar in Kashmir.
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In February 1969, when Muniji completed sixty years of his life after initiation as sadhu, felicitations were extended to him in a volume containing an account of his life and works together with appreciations from scholars here and abroad. While paying respectful tributes to Muniji Prof. Klaus Bruhn of Germany had said, "Muni Punyavijayji is perhaps the greatest living specialist in the field of Jaina literature but he is not a specialist in the sense that he devoted all his life-time to the study of one particular section of the material. He had a rare instinct for urgency which compelled him to shift his interest from one field to another, as soon as he felt that the most urgent work had been completed and that new and different tasks awaited for his attention." Similarly, Prof. W. Norman Brown of the University of Pensylvania, U.S.A., had said, "He has been throughout his whole career a worthy representative of the best Indian tradition of learning and teaching." Prof. Dr. Ludwig Alsdorf, Professor of Indology in the University of Hamburg called him, "A model monk and true scholar of wide interests."
I have said earlier in this article and will say again that it was in his devotion to work and dynamism of thought that the true greatness of Muniji lay. He was never swept away with either appreciation or opposition and what was most astonishingly revealing about him was that even though deeply absorbed and closely closetted with the works of the past, he was not closed in his mind and in his approach and that gave him the vision of a true sadhu and a religiously upright man. He attached great importance to education, which, to him, was the real foundation for progress. In so far as religion was concerned he was of the opinion that religion should help man in his progress. He had once written, "The time has come when every sensible person should dispassionately see and think how religion can help in the human progress and uplift. Only when religion fulfills this part it will be possible for the religion and religiosity to find a worthy place in our life; otherwise in spite of all the rites and rituals of different sects of our fatih and religion, true religion is bound to decay and die."
Let the above be taken as the Muni's message for us all, whether the consecrated or the laity. Religion to live and to help men to live more sublime and more purposeful, and meaningful lives must have a clear and undivided vision and dynamism in order to meet the challenge of the times.
Munisri Punyavijayji is dead, no doubt; his message and example are not dead, no doubt.