Doctrine of Jainas

Author(s): Walther Shubring, Wolfgang Beurlen
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 15

A SHORT HISTORY OF JAIN RESEARCH
the fact that STEVENSON was the first European scholar to be confronted with the canonical Prakrit?. The Abhidhānacintāmanı in 1858 was followed by WEBER'S edition of Dhaneśvara's Satrumjayamāhātmya3 with a detailed preface. So,then, the textual basis was rather narrow for LASSEN's sketch of Jainisme in his "Indische Altertumskunde” 4, 755-787 (1861).5
§ 2. The mentioned edition had been WEBER's first attempt in Jain research, but years later it was actually his great study "Uber ein Fragment der Bhagavatī etc.” that was epochmaking. It appeared in two parts in the Abhandlungen der Koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 1865-66 and in a separate edition (1866-67), that is to say again twenty years after the first Jain text (s.a.). Obsolete as it is now, yet it marks in our field the beginning of a philological and creative epoch. As to it, the reader may be referred to WINDISCH's precise description rendered in the Grundriss (Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research). But the fundaments laid down by WEBER in self-sacrificing zeal cannot be passed over here : his treatise “Uber die heiligen Schriften der Zaina" in Indische Studien Vol. 16 and 17 (1883-85) based upon the Jain manuscripts acquired by the Royal Library of Berlin 1873-78, and his “Verzeichnis" of the same (1888-92), the latter represented by two monumental volumes, being a most accurate description which even extends to literature and history. A work of that scope going beyond the usual limits of a catalogue was not out of place at that stage. The Jain manuscripts purchased in
1 PISCHEL, Grammetik der Prakrit-Sprachen in § 17 deals with the history of research in the Ardha-Māgadhi
2 PAVIE's French analysis of the Padmavaticarıtra in JAs 5, T 7 may also be mentioned
3 Albrecht WEBER, Uber das Catrumjaya Māhātmyam Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Jaina Leipzig 1858
The w d Jainism is an English rendering and ctymologically not correct In German works of LEUMANN, WINTERNITZ, the AUTHOR and others the student will read "Jinismus" and "Jinistisch" derived from Jina, as are, in all languages, "Buddhism etc" from Buddha "Bauddhism" ctc has never and nowhere been said
5 Translation by REHATSEK JA 2, 193-200, 258-265
6 “A good deal of my visual faculty has been buricd therein", Verz II, 3'p. XVIII