Books and Papers

Author(s): A N Upadhye
Publisher: Hindi Granth Ratnakar

Page 12

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At the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, I had the good luck of studying portions of the Atharvaveda and a couple of Upaniṣads under Dr. S. K. Belvalkar. Even after my student days, I have received much guidance from him. He gave me a valuable piece of advice (August 21, 1939): "Just one word of caution from an elder colleague in the line: anantapāram kila sabda-śāstram, and at your age and with your energy there is the temptation to attempt everything. It often leads to a crop of unfinished projects, which weigh heavily upon you as you approach the end of your journey. Please therefore do choose the very best and the highest that you want to achieve and just concentrate upon that. Let the lesser works be left severely alone. Secondly, the niceties of scholarship are good in their own way; but one must not lose the wood for trees. Works which smell too much of the midnight lamp and indulge in an uncalled-for display of scholarship do not do half as much good to the society as certain other less profound but eminently practical publications. There is always the golden mean, which it requires a wise man to choose." I have always kept this advice in mind. I made it a point not to undertake too many things and never to leave anything half way. Of the two works which I have on hand now, the critical edition of the Kattigeyāṇuppekkhā, with the Sanskrit commentary on Subhacandra, is nearing completion; and the Kuvalayamala, when published, will bring to light for the first time a great Prakrit Campū. This latter work has taken the little leisure left from college duties for more than half a dozen years, but the rigorous work that it is exacting from me has been itself a source of great joy.
I am not a cynic, but I do feel that the generation of scholars to which the triumvirate mentioned above belonged is not being suitably replaced: naturally, I feel intensely for the integrity and rigour of scholarship which they maintained. I have been benefited by their advice, and I have quoted from it with a hope that their words might prove a lesson to others as well.
I thank the Editors of Journals and my reviewers, printers and publishers: some of them, especially Muni Shri Jinavijayaji, General Editor of the famous Singhi Jaina Series, accommodated my editions in the most critical times of the War. About them I