Jain Journal 1970 01

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

Page 25

JANUARY, 1970
of the Jeynes and Boodhists were published, the first book that had the Jainas in its title. Its descriptive portions are readable even now, whereas this cannot be said of its mythological and speculative deductions.
We abstain from cataloguing here which was printed after 1827, since this can be found in Guerinot's Bibliography (s.b.). We must confine ourselves to mention that Sketch of Wilson, because it represents the most important treatment of the subject at that time. He gives a report on the numerable Jaina manuscripts both privately owned by him and by the Calcutta Sanskrit College. His Descriptive Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection dealt with 44 South Indian Jaina manuscripts that had come to the East India Company in London. But even the earliest essays were partly based upon texts as was Colebrooke's first one in that it concerned Hemacandra's Abhidhana Cintāmaṇi and the Kalpa Sutra of the Jaina Canon. Still he made use of both in a selective manner only and was far from editing or translating them completely, and twenty years had to pass until the first Jaina text was published. Again it was Hemacandra's work that was edited by Bohtlingk and Rieu with a German translation in 1847 (St. Petersburg), whereas the Kalpa Sutra, along with the Navatattvaprakaraṇa, appeared in 1848 in Stevenson's English renderings. That this was a rather imperfect performance is easily explained by the fact that Stevenson was the first European scholar to be confronted with the canonical Prakrit". The Abhidhana Cintamani in 1858 was followed by Weber's edition of Dhanesvara's Satrunjayamāhātmya9 with a detailed preface. So, then, the textual basis was rather narrow for Lassen's sketch of Jainism10 in his Indische Altertumskunde 4,755-787 (1861)11.
4 The Mackenzie Collection. A Descriptive Catalogue...by...H. H. Wilson. C. 1828, 2nd ed., Madras, 1882.
5 The Kalpa Sutra and Nava Tattva. Two works illustrative of the Jaina religion and philosophy. Transl. from the Magadhi by J. Stevenson. Lo. 1848.
6 Comp. Jacobi, The Kalpa Sutra of Bhadrabahu, p. 27ff.
7
Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen in § 17 deals with the history of research in the Ardha-Magadhi.
8 Pavie's French analysis of the Padmavaticaritra in JAs 5, T.7 may also be mentioned.
Albrecht Weber, Uber das Satrumjaya Mahatmyam. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Jaina. Leipzig, 1858.
The word Jainism is an English rendering and etymologically not correct. In German works of Leumann, Winternitz, the author and others the student will read Jinismus and Jinistisch derived from Jina, as are, in all languages, Buddhism etc. from Buddha. Bauddhism etc. has never and nowhere been said.
Translation by Rehatsek, JA 2, pp. 193-200; pp. 258-265.
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