ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 04

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

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Travelers' tales began to filter back to Europe and Britain also from medieval Arab sources. The western scholars' usual cursory glance through say Al Biruni and Ibn Battuta impresses one with Indian mathematicians, technicians and scientists who were not overcommunicative. Would you befriend a scholar working for Mahmud of Ghazni or Muhammad Tuqluk? One also glimpses naked holy persons and self-immolations depicted without distinct and fine details. The Indian rope-trick and sati stories were already abroad. Coming to early Portuguese, Dutch and British times in eastern waters, the early nineteenth century scholar in U.K. or U.S.A. read of a group who had bird hospitals, immensely beautiful temples full of white-clad pilgrims on the hills and holy persons who starved themselves to death when they felt their lifework was done.?
[06] The Century before Mr. V.R. Gandhi at Chicago, 1790-1874
But the real beginnings come with the Orientalists and "Anglo-Indian" scholars and missionaries of the 1790's to 1824's working in Calcutta, Bombay as well as up-country in India and back in Britain. Their work soon very quickly became known in France, Germany and in the U.S.A., especially in the Boston area, which, apart even from its Harvard Indological scholars, had close mercantile and missionary connections with India. For example, it is likely that Colebro's very early state, it's specifically about the jams published in London in 1807 was, we may suppose, available in New England very soon after publication. Early material has often not yet got on to in-line computeroperated catalogues, dates are sometimes hard to discover without retrieving the copy itself. However, as nuggets of this kind of research which has yet to be carried out with care and detail, we may mention two books from the 1840's, which were in our belief obtainable rapidly in the Boston area for missionary purposes soon after their first publication.
The first example of Indian work reaching U.S. early is a book printed and published bar the American Mission Press in Bombay in the 1840s. It is known that this Press sent copies of its work year by year back to the sending body to indicate what was being achieved and that the books they sent were made available for consultation and general use. Its title page speaks for itself.
Historical researches on the origins and principles of the Bauddha and Jaina religions, embracing the leading tenets of their system as found prevailing in various countries. Illustrated by a descriptive account of the sculpture in the caves of the western India with translations of the inscriptions from those of Kanari, Karh, Ajanta, Ellora, Nasa' k etc which indicate their convexion (sic) with the coins and topes of the Punjab and Afghanistan. By James Bird esq M.R-A.S, F.R.G.S. Bombay. Printed at the American Mission Press. T. Liraham, Printer, 1847.
The book is beautifully printed, a joy to see and handle. The colour-tutted lithographs are works of art. There is deep respect as well as orientalist curiosity in such phrases as one describing a colossal image of a Tirthankara which begins "Affords cannot well convey an idea of this magnificent sculpture", or one is describing the Jain ascetic people: "Tom Riltin's object is to obtain a state of perfect apathy or quiescence through the practice of abstraction and mortification." One wishes there were more on Jainism, but it is obvious that for this writer, like most indologists and scholars both ancient and modern, Big Brother Hinduism and Big Sister Buddhism are in the front while Jainism is a little out of focus. As Stevenson who translated the Nasik inscription in this volume, remarks in his book mentioned below: "the waning light of Buddhism (in India) permitted its (Jainism's) fainter radiance to reappear on the Western horizon. "12
Another example is Reverend J. Stevenson's translation of two Jain works published in 1847 which was per haps available a year or less later in Boston. The texts translated are the Kalpa S tra and Nava Tatra.13 It was studied by generations of missionaries in Britain and U.S.A. preparing to go to Gujarat, Bombay or other areas of India where they would meet Jains. The texts are most carefully chosen and take the reader near to the heart of Jainism less than five of the days of the vitally important Retreat of the Rainy Season are devoted to the Kalpa. It tells quite fully the story of the great twenty-fourth Tirthankara and more briefly of four others of them. The S tra also includes a summary of rules for monks. The translator was deeply conversant with the work of Bhodrabahu and at least four commentators. His respect for these Indian teachers and the subject and the earliness of his date excuse his conclusions and his misunderstandings of a number of words, ideas and phrases.
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