Jain Journal 1970 01

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

Page 45

JANUARY, 1970
151
Jaina Anga in the magnificent Berlin State Library, and he used to send prompt replies giving me his advice, views and instructions. In May 1935, after the Spring vacation, I returned to Hamburg, attended the Semester lectures and worked right through the summer vacation on my doctorate thesis. During this semester, Schubring read with me Pali. Apabhramsa and Bharavi's Kirātārjuniya. I may narrate here an amusing instance of the absent-mindedness of the learned. When reading with him the drama Mudrārākşasa some time earlier we came upon a passage in which it is described that the teacher forgot about the seat that had already been offered to him, and Schubring remarked with a smile "Well, teachers are however not so forgetful nowadays !" It so happened some time later that when I was working with him in his Seminar office-room on the Jaina texts one morning, I noticed that he was clothed in formal dress suit and I concluded that he had to go to lunch in town in connection with some special function, straight from the Seminar. In course of our work I happened to tell him, while he was about to fix the day for our next sitting, that it was Wednesday. “Is that so? Are you sure ?” he asked, and my statement was confirmed by a reference to the wall calender in the room, whereupon he took up the phone and told his wife "The lunch was for Thursday and I thought today was Thursday but Herr Sen has just reminded me that today is Wednesday; so I am coming home straight for lunch." I suppose Frau Professor was not unfamiliar with such happenings!
In July before the summer vacation began we had a tea party at his home. In Germany students always attended functions in Professors' houses in formal dark suit which is warmer than summer wear, and we had done the same on this occasion as well. That July was prematurely warm and we sat out for tea in the garden. Noticing that we were in dark suits, certainly too warm for the weather, Schubring told us "Well, you have to thank yourselves for your suffering now ! I didn't expect you to turn up in your dark suits ; you could have very well come in your normal summer clothes." While we sat in the garden a van passed by with a loud-speaker which disturbed Schubring, used as he was to work in the stillness of midnight, although he remained unmoved ; but Frau Professor turned to him in profound sympathy and exclaimed in a voice of agony “Oh Walther!” Matsunami had a very senstitive and powerful camera, with which he used to take photographs of all parties in Professor's house and also of Seminar functions.
One week-end I paid a visit to Kiel and met Otto Schrader, Professor of Sanskrit there, first in his house, from where we adjourned to a hill-top cafe overlooking the Canal and the Baltic, and sat talking.