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96 First Steps to Jainism
(p. 21) he makes mention of "the difficulty which besets a European in penetrating into an intricate Indian philosophical system". It is true, in undertaking and accomplishing such a task everything is against him, except the will to know and to get over every obstacle. The Indian can hardly realise how a day's, perhaps a week's, work may be lying behind the grasp of a term the understanding of which is a matter of tradition to him. Considering what Dr. von Glasenapp has achieved, it may not be easy to say who is to be congratulated more, whether he who has mastered so successfully the task before him, or the readers, the members of the Jain community before all, who thus easily enter into the fruits of the author's labour. The Encyclopedia for Indo-Aryan Research (I. Band, I, Heft B, Geschicte der Sanskrit-Philologie und Indischen Altertumskunde, von Ernst Windisch, p. 354), acknowledges the worth of the present book which it calls "an important new publication on Jainism" that "should make the understanding of the Karman doctrine easier". Indeed it requires more than an ordinary acumen to find out from an even string of Gathas the leading lines of a whole system, to co-ordinate and subordinate them according to their importance and consequence, and to marshal the details into their respective quarters. It needs a will to conquer in order to enter upon tasks of this kind, not unlike the entering of a forest in a dark continent, possibly untrodden by human foot, bristling with technical terms, unexplained, yet full of settled meaning, often enough not to be derived from etymology. The enthusiasm and love of a research scholar is required for trying one's strength at such problems with the likely, but by no means certain, prospect of pushing the limits of our knowledge at least a little further back into the vast realm hitherto unknown and unexplored. May the English edition of "The Doctrine of the Karman in Jain Philiosophy" meet with the same success in India, its spiritual home, the German one has met with in a foreign
land.
St. Xavier's College Bombay
May 15, 1921
Jain Education International
For Private Personal Use Only
R. Zimmermann, S.J.
www.jainelibrary.org
