Jain Journal 1992 04

SR No.: 520106
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1992
Total Pages: 70
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 4 MB

Page 18

APRIL, 1992
Bühler further subdivided this number to indicate 141 were Digambara works and 86 Svetambara. All the Digambara manuscripts came from Jaipur while the Svetambara manuscripts came from many places.
Bühler suffered from a delicate medical constitution and found it necessary to spend the next two years in Europe restoring his health. He undertook only one more search trip in India. The report of it showed his continuing interest in the Jains. A major thrust of this last major project was to prepare catalogs of Jain temple libraries in Cambay and Patan. He sent two men to Cambay and one to Patan to begin work before his arrival in each of the two cities. In Cambay work was to center on the Santinath temple but after two months of negotiations the men returned to Surat without having gained entrance into the library. At the end of 1879 the Collector of Kheda and the Divan intervened on his behalf and got him access to the library. Bühler then personally went to Cambay and inspected the library. It "is fully worthy of its fame. The manuscripts, about 300 in number, are exceedingly old, six dating from the beginning of the 12th century and beautifully and correctly written."
"22
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The person sent to Patan was to first catalog the Samghavina Pada Bhaṇḍar and then when this was done to begin work on the Hemacandra Bhaṇḍār. Although the keeper of the Samghavina Pada Bhaṇḍār had been very cooperative to Bühler earlier, when the Pandit arrived to make a formal list of its contents numerous obstacles were suddenly erected "as the leading Jainas feared that some sinister attempt against their books might be intended,"23 As in Cambay, the Sambhavina Pada Bhaṇḍār had an exceedingly important collection which contained "nothing but palm-leaf manuscripts."24 The finds of such old manuscripts in the two libraries prompted Bühler to observe that "it will be the duty of Sanskrit scholars, who again and again publish the classical Sanskrit books according to manuscripts dating at the best from the 15th century, to turn their attention to our old Bhaṇḍārs and to use the copies there deposited, which are not only older than their earliest paper copies, but older also than the oldest commentators on whom usually great reliance is placed." The use of the phrase "our old
"'25
22 Georg Bühler "Sanskrit Manuscripts in Western India", Indian Antiquary 10 (1881), p. 44.
23 Ibid., p. 44.
24 Ibid., p. 44.
25 Ibid., p. 44.