Jain Journal 1970 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 24

It was in the year 1807 that in the Asiatic Researches (Calcutta and London), Vol. IX, there appeared three reports published under the title 'Account of the Jains' and collected by Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Colin Mackenzie supplemented by an abstract from his Diary of 1797 and from that of Dr. F. Buchanan1, the latter containing some notes of a Jaina gentleman. These publications were immediately followed by H. T. Colebrooke's 'Observations on the Sect of Jains'2. They were based upon those researches as well as on Colebrooke's own, and it was in them that, apart from bare descriptive recording, some scholarly spirit first made itself felt by a critical standpoint taken and by facts being combined. Jaina research thus dates from somewhat more than 150 years ago.
A Short History of Jaina Research
WALTHER SCHUBRNIG
In H. H. Wilson's Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus we find some stray notes about the Jainas, but no details are given, though, on the other hand, the author dwells upon Vol. I of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society (1827) which contained an essay by Delamaine and one more by Buchanan (=F. Buchanan Hamilton), both with the title 'On the Srawacs or Jains' and followed by a few remarks of the latter and of W. Francklin about some Jaina temples, by Colebrooke's account of two inscriptions, and by Wilson's own review of Colebrooke's study 'Sect of Jina' in his Eassays on the Philosophy of the Hindus. In the same year, 1827, Franclin's Researches on the Tenets
1 Buchanan published A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar (Lo., 1807; 2nd ed. Madras, 1870.) Comp. Guerinot, JAS., 1909, p. 55. In this work the Jainas are often mentioned. Buchanan's Journal kept during the survey of the Districts of Patna and Gaya in 1811-12, ed. by V. H. Jackson. Patna, 1925, contains a description of his visit to the place where Mahavira died. Comp. Jacobi, SPAW, 1930, p. 561. Printed in Colebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays, 2nd. ed. (1872), Vol II, pp. 191-224.
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We should not like to pass over in silence the earliest references to the Jainas. Comp. Windisch in his Geschichte der Indo-Arischen Philologie etc., p. 29; Zachariae, WZKM 24, pp. 337-344 (reprinted in his Kleine Schriften, pp. 41-47) and Festschrift Winternitz pp. 174-185; Randle, JRAS, 1933, p. 147. The Greek glossator Hesychios (5th century A.D.) mentions gennoi as naked philosophers a word in which M. Schmidt in his 2nd ed. (1867) of Hes. p. 342 surmises the Jainas. Comp. Gray and Schuyler, Am.J. of Philol. 22 (1901), p. 197. Lassen, Ind. Altertumskunde 4 (1861) and Luders, KZ 38, p. 433 are not against Schmidt's suggestion, whereas, Stein in Megasthenes and Kautilya, p. 293f. maintains a cautious attitude.