Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 138

A GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
Wonderful Feats Of Memory
(Hemchandracharya, Shrimand Rajchandra and Pandit Gattulalji)
The late, Professor Max Muller in his "Psychological Religion" says-"To those who are not acquainted with the powers of human memory when well disciplined, or rather when, not systematically ruined, as ours has been, it may almost seem incredible, that so much of the ancient literature of India should have been composed, and should have survived during so many centuries, before it was finally consigned to writing." It is difficult to believe in the wonderful possibilities of human memory, as our modern psychology does not teach any method of cultivating this faculty, to an extent which may be called miraculous.
monk, when he was six years old. The monk was seated in the monastery on a table-like raised seat with a blanket spread over it. He looked at the boy with some interest, but the boy instead of performing the usual obeisance to the monk, made himself comfortable on the seat by the monk's side. Monk took this to be a sign that the boy was going to be a great man. So he asked the mother if she would give her child to him as his disciple and explained to her the reasons of his proposal. The mother oscillated for some time between parental love and a desire that the boy should be a great benefactor of the Jain sect. Ultimately reason triumphed over emotion and she gave her child to the monk to be initiated as his disciple. Hemchandracharya, thus entered the life of monkhood at the early age of six. As years went on, he became proficient in the sacred lore and at the age of twenty-one he became the spiritual head of the Jain people. History further tells us that he converted Kumarapala, a prince of Gujrat to the Jain faith
Hemchandracharya
Many wonderful instances of the feats of memory are forthcoming in the history of India. Preeminently the literature of the Jain sect, an old religious cult, has chronicled many such instances. Hemchandracharya the famous Jain encyclopedic, is one of them. He lived in the middle of the eleventh century. He was born in the northern part of Western India. His parents were Jain. His mother once took him with her to a Jain
He also became the author of many wonderful literary works, the estimated bulk of which is 35,000,000 couplets, of 32 syllables each. He lived for 84 years. One often wonders how he was able to compose such a large quantity of new literature. Tradition tells us that it was the usual practice of this great scholar to make several scribes sit around him. After breakfast, he would ask about forty of them to take their seats around a tank of ink, with pen and paper. He would then walk round the tank and first dictate to scribe No. 1 the first verse of a work on Grammar which he would then be composing. While No. 1 is writing it down, the monk would move on, go to scribe No. 2 and dictate to him the first verse of a work on Prosody. In this way, he would dictate to the forty scribes, one after another, the first verse of each of the forty new works which he would be composing at the same time. Having finished the first round he would