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OURSELVES
Jainism has an extensive literature, sacred and secular, which represents one of the main streams of Indian thought and culture. But so far, it has remained an abstruse subject known critically to only a handful of specialists. German scholarship pioneered the scientific study of Jainism and it was Hermann Jacobi who in his Kalpa Sutra of Bhadrabahu (Leipzig, 1879) demonstrated for the first time to the Western world the independence of Jainism from Buddhism. Jacobi was the pioneer of Jaina studies and in India he was fittingly honoured with the title of Jaina-mata-divākara, "one who brought the light of day on the Jaina view". Pioneering work was done also by Weber, Buhler, Leumann, Klatt, Hertel and Bloomfield, to name scholars of the older generation. Their work lay in the field partly of biography and bibliography and partly of canonical and narrative text.
Dr. Walther Schubring, to whose memory we dedicate this issue of our Journal, devoted his life-long labour to the scientific study of Jainism. He wrote not only the masterpiece Die Lehre der Jainas (Berlin, 1935) based on Svetambara canons in old Prakrit but also edited and translated many of their canons. This will be evident from the bibliography as compiled by one of his students, Prof. Dr. Hamm of Bonn University, and printed hereafter in this issue along with a short life-sketch of the master. For this identification with Jainism Schubring was regarded in Germany as Jainism personified. To the German Indologists, Schubring was Jainism and Jainism was Schubring. It is a great honour indeed.
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