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FOREWORD
BY
Prof. Hermann Jacobi Dr. Phil, and Lit.
For
When I was asked to write a Foreword to the present magnificent edition of the Bhaktamara and Kalyāṇamandira stotras, I gave my assent most willingly. my edition and German translation of these two stotras in 1876 was one of the first publications in my career as a Sanskritist, and it is with a kind of melancholic pleasure that I now, in old age, return to, and revise a subject I dealt with more than fifty years ago. At the outset I may state with satisfaction that I found no reason to alter the opinions which I expressed in my first publication. Indeed, all scholars who, before and after me, have critically examined the Bhaktamara stotra, substantially agree in their opinions. The latest discussion of the whole subject is contained in G. B. Quackenbos, the Sanskrit Poems of Mayura, New York 1917. But I refer the Indian reader to the pregnant remarks of that eminent scholar Pandit Durgaprasad which he premised to his edition of those stotras in the Kavyamālā part VII, p. 1 f. His agreement is so much the more satisfactory to me as he almost certainly had not seen my paper which had appeared in a German periodical of restricted circulation in India. The last named circumstance will serve me as an excuse for briefly repeating in this Foreword much that I wrote on the former occasion; the additional results of my renewed investigation will be dealt with at greater length.
Jain Education International
Jaina hymnology is a rather extensive branch of their Literature. There are stotras written in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhrams'a, and the modern vernaculars, and in a great variety of styles from the simplest to the most artificial. Yet among the almost numberless productions of the ecclesiastical muse Manatunga's Bhaktamara stotra has held, during many centuries, the foremost rank by the unanimous consent of the Jainas. And it fully deserves its great popularity by its religious pathos and the beauty of the diction. Though Manatunga writes in the flowery style of classical Sanskrit poetry, still he avoids laboured conceits and verbal artifices, as such alamkaras are apt to obscure the rasa; and his verses are, as a rule, easily understood by those accustomed to read Sanskrit kavyas. Besides being a work of devotion, the Bhaktamara stotra has also the character of a prayer for help in the dangers and trials under which men suffer. It is perhaps this particular trait which greatly endeared the Bhaktamara stotra to the heart of the faithful.
The Kalyanamandira stotra by Kumudachandra is, as regards form and content a counterpart of the Bhaktamara stotra to such an extent that an actual: भ. 2
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