Jain Journal 1970 01

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

Page 46

152
JAIN JOURNAL
While telling Schubring about this visit I mentioned what Professor Schrader bad remarked viz., that Schubring should, because of his specialisation in the Prakrits, write a fresh grammer thereon supplementing thereby Richard Pischel's classic Grammatik der Prakrit Sprachen (published in the famous Grundriss Series). Schubring on hearing this smiled indulgently and said “Well, well, we shall see!” The meaning of that smile I understood some months later.
When the summer vacation came, during which I was to finalise my Doctorate thesis, Schubring gave me a valuable advice which stood me in good stead during all my future writing in subsequent years as well. He asked me, when I had fully completed all the spadework necessary, to leave the work untouched for sometime, before making the final draft, in order to be able to bring a fresh mind and outlook to the task in its finished form—"Get a good distance from it, a complete detachment from it, so that you get a deeper understanding and wider view of the entire problem, before you put your final views down”, he said. All earnest and serious writers shall recognise the value of this precept-Isaac Newton waited for nearly twenty years before he finally published a theory that he had discovered. He gave me another advice viz., to write my thesis in English and not in German-in German universities a candidate is permitted to write his thesis, by permission of the Faculty, either in German or in English or French. "If you wrote in German”, he said, "nobody in India would ever bother to read or know about it, whereas your future lies in India where your work should be known to Indian scholars." He added that he would obtain the necessary sanction from the Dean for the purpose. Before my spadework was completed he arranged to get for me, as an important adjunct to the critical apparatus used by me, a photographed copy of a valuable manuscript of the Jaina text I was working on, which had been used by his own Guru Professor Ernst Leumann as well, from the University of Strasbourg which used to be formerly German territory but was transferred to France after the first World War.
My thesis was submitted in course of the winter semester, approved, the viva voce held, and along with three other candidates in various other subjects I was admitted to the Doctor's degree by the Dean in the presence of the Faculty: It is the custom that immediately after the conferment of the degree, the Professors of each candidate come up and shake hands with him in congratulation. In the tense atmosphere of the formal ceremony I felt overwhelmed with emotion when Schubring, his face beaming with joy, came and shook me warmly by the hand. Next day at the Seminar he asked me if I had sent a cable to my father