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PREFACE.
HIS is perhaps the first systematic attempt in India to publish the
sacred and secular works of the Jainas with translation in English, so that not only the Jainas scattered over different parts of India, speaking different languages, but also the savants of Europe and America, may be enabled to explore the fountain-head of Jainism and derive a first-hand knowledge of the hitherto sealed literature of the Jainas. At the outset, we acknowledge gratefully the help derived from the works published and researches made by the orientalists with reference to Jainism without which it would have been impossible for us to launch into this great undertaking. It is not too much to say that, without the epoch-making researches of scholars like Weber, Hoernle, Jacobi, Leumann, Guerinot, Lewis Rice, Bhandarkar, etc., and the publication of original works by various societies in India, the literature of the Jainas would not have attracted even the slight attention which the modern orientalists deem fit to bestow on it.
Though Jainism is one of the oldest religions of India whose votaries in the past ranked from the prince to the peasant, exercising a noble influence in placing all beings on the same sacred status by unfurling the banner of peace and universal brotherhood, under which they were called to assemble, it is at the present day understood to consist of some customs and practices, the relics of a noble system, at which the other religionists continually fling their weapons of ridicule. The true principles and tenets of Jainism are as little known to these antagonists of the present day as to the Jainas themselves, and, consequently, we find a thickening of the gloom of ill-feeling in the minds of the friends and foes of Jainism which would have been easily dispelled by the light of knowledge, if they studied the original works of the Jaina Acharyas. It is also a pity that the different sects of the Jainas waste their time and labour in finding faults of one another, each endeavouring to belittle the other sects and with well-meant, but ill-advised ways make the breach between them wider and wider every day. A study of their own canons, with the history of the great schisms in their order, would certainly dispel the deep-rooted aversion against the
