Jain Journal 1970 01

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

Page 26

132
JAIN JOURNAL
The mentioned edition had been Weber's first attempt in Jaina research, but years later it was actually his great study Uber ein Fragment der Bhagavati etc. that was epoch-making. It appeared in two parts in the Abhandlungen der Koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 1865-66 and in a separate edition (1866-67), that is to say again twenty years after the first Jaina text (s.a.). Obsolete as it is now, yet it marks in our field the beginning of a philological and creative epoch. As to it, the reader may be referred to Windisch's precise description rendered in the Grundriss (Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research). But the fundaments laid down by Weber in self-sacrificing zeal cannot be passed over here : his treatise 'Uber die heiligen Schriften der Jaina' in Indische Studien Vol 16, and 17 (1883-85) based upon the Jaina manuscripts acquired by the Royal Library of Berlin 1873-78, and his Verzeichnis of the same (1888-92), the latter12 represented by two monumental volumes, being a most accurate description which even extends to literature and history. A work of that scope going beyond the usual limits of a catalogue was not out of place at that stage. The Jaina manuscripts purchased in later years have been catalogued by the author not earlier than in 194413,
Some time about those eighties the first prints of canonical texts (1880 ff.) came to Europe adding to foster Jaina research work over there. Their inaugurator was Rai Dhanpat Singh Bahadur at Azimgunj or Murshidabad in Bengal. Those huge volumes served their purpose until they were replaced by more handy ones some thirty years after (s.b.).
The manuscripts described by Weber had come to Berlin thanks to an agreement between Buhler and the Department of Public Instruction at Bombay which had commissioned him and other scholars in their service with the careful examination of private collections and purchase of manuscripts at government costs. He was allowed to acquire manusscripts even for foreign libraries, provided they were doubles. The examined and purchased manuscripts were catalogued and listed in the valuable reports of R.S. and S.R. Bhandarkar, Buhler, Kielhorn, Peterson, and others. The manuscripts acquired by the Government have been deposited in the Deccan College, now Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Poona. The Jaina works among them have been minutely described by H. R. Kapadia in Vol. XVII of the Descriptive Catalogue 12 “A good deal of my visual faculty has been buried therein”, Verz II, 3. p.
xviii. 13 Die Jaina-Handschriften der Preussischen Staatsbibliothek Neuerwerbun
gen seit 1891. Leipzig 1944 (1127 mss. on 647 pages).