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His knowledge on Jainism is superb and unsurpassed, beyond the cognizance of an ordinary student. He is, in fact, a self-made scholar and reads voraciously. He peruses and writes, and he writes faster than one can read them. When any idea is dawned in his mind, he sinks deep into it, till he reaches the end of the problem.
He has written nearly three thousand papers on Jaina religion and philosophy, culture and history, art and architecture, folk-lore and tradition, language and literature. There is hardly any branch on Jainism which is not touched by him : nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.
He is a polyglot. He knows Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Apabhramsa, Bengali, Hindi, Rajasthani, Gujarati and several other languages. He has helped innumerable scholars in this line.
As far as I know he has no enemy; and he does not live in the realm of hostility. He is very courteous and bountiful, and is sympathetic towards young learners and scholars. He is a man of extremely simple and unostentatious habits and his attitude towards life and world is intensely religious.
Shri Nahata, a scholar and virtuoso, is an embodiment of the revival of Jaina glory, culture and history which he has unfurled for over fifty years of his life. With his unbounded zeal and inexhaustible fund of energy and unsurpassed skill, he has made himself a ‘moving encyclopaedia on Jainism, a rare honour which a non-academician can ever attain. His ideas are lofty and sacred in nature. He has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He is by nature taciturn, and values what is useful and seeks, what is worthy. His contributions are more thana. D. Litt.
On this solemn occasion I pray to God for his hundred active life:
pasyema saradah satam, jivema saradah satam, srnuyama saradah satam,
--Dr. Satyaranjan Banerjee Dept. of Comparative Philology and Linguistics, University of Calcutta
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