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JAIN MANUSCRIPTS COLLECTION IN.
FOREIGN COUNTRIES Dr. KANU BHAI SHETH EX-HEAD OF MANUSRIPT DEPARTMENT L.D. INSTITUTE OF INDOLOGY KALPANA SHETH EX-RESEARCH OFFICER FORBUS GUJRAT SABHA AHMEDABAD
Vedic, Buddhisim and Jainism are the three main Indian religions. In olden times, all the three schools had the tradition of creating hand-written manuscripts which were put into collections. In the Jain tradition, due to formal administrations by the fourfold community (i.e. sadhu, sadhvi, laymen and laywomen) such collections were in abundance and were well looked after. In India, such collections number in thousands, but also outside India, such collections are still existent. Jain community has special values of such collections and learned s?dhus and scholars are always busy with research and editing work of old scriptures and as a result of this, thousands of old scriptures have come into light and are published.
During the British colonial rule in India, the local populaces were impressed by the British life style, administrative and educational systems, as a result of which the educational system in India took a turn. This led to research in several new areas of learning including manuscriptology in which the British contribution is noteworthy. Attempts led to the recovery of many handwritten manuscripts which were first hand-listed and then subjected to preservation processes. This activity started in 1850 and resulted in thousands of invaluable manuscripts being saved; there is an abundance of Jain manuscripts in these collections.
In those days Jain community was considered financially very sound and because of the administration of the fourfold sangh/organizations, thousands of manuscripts had been written as copying manuscripts is considered a very pious and holy work. These handwritten manuscripts were distributed to different Jain libraries where they were preserved carefully. Thus such Jain manuscript libraries came into an existence.
European scholars got interested in the manuscripts and started doing research in this field. Many foreign scholar like G. Bühler, Hermann Jacobi, C. Bendall, F.L. Pullé, W. Schubring, and L.Alsdorf and many more started research with manuscripts. As a result of this many Indian manuscripts have appeared in many countries like Germany, Austria, Italy, France, America, Australia, Canada, Gulf countries and many more.
Credit for these collections goes to all these famous scholars of indology with whose contribution all these manuscripts libraries have come into existence and are well preserved.
According to Late Pujya muniraj shri Jambuvijayaji Maharaj in the foreword of the Catalogue of the Jain manuscripts of the British Library "In this day and age, even in India, the work of researching and cataloguing manuscripts is extremely difficult and rarely undertaken. It is therefore all the more to be appreciated that such arduous work is undertaken in foreign countries". The edition and study of our first and most aunthetic text of one of the most important and holy scripture of Jain canon, the Kalpas?tra, is the result of the research work of
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