________________ About The Translator Kastur Chand Lalwani is a scholar who uses English, and he has already a mass of English writings of the highest excellence on Jaina texts and Jainistics. It will be difficult to find such a wonderful combination of common sense, of a sane approach to religion, with a rationalised love and respect for the Jaina tradition, all on the background a deep knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of the Jaina weltanschauung and Jaina approach to the Reality. His beautifully printed edition of one canonical text, Dasavaikalika Sutra, with Ardha-Magadhi text, and English translation and commentary is a scholars' as well as book-lovers' delight. And now we have before us what promises to be his magnum opus when he completes it, the first of the six volumes of Bhagavati Sutra, that huge encyclopaedic treatise, in an equally sumptuous editiontext, a fine translation in beautiful English with a commentary. This is a feast for all-intellectual, artistic and historical, and also, shall I say, spiritual? We can only congratulate ourselves for this fine achievement and offer our grateful thanks to Kastur Chand Lalwani, wishing more power to his elbow, as well as to the Jain Bhawan of Calcutta which has given it out to the world. -SUNITI KUMAR CHATTERJEE National Professor of India in Humanities, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Philology in the University of Calcutta.
