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BOOK REVIEW
SRI MAHAVIR JAINA VIDYALAYA GOLDEN JUBILEE VOLUME, edited by a Board of Editors and published by Hon. Secretaries of the Vidyalaya from Gowalia Tank Road, Bombay 26, 1968. Part I, Pages xxiv+335+83+420 (D. Crown 1/8), Price Rs. 35.00 and Part II, Pages 24+224+248 (D. Crown 1/8), Price Rs. 15.00.
As it appears, perhaps in atonement of its long indifference to cultivate things literary and scholastic, the Jaina community of India during a brief span of the past few years has produced a number of bulky volumes to honour its individuals and institutions. The two parts of the Sri Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Golden Jubilee Volume, now under review, take their place among them. This volume running in all a little over 1300 pages was printed on the occasion of the completion of fifty years by the school which runs a chain of educational institutions on the West Coast under the secterian patronage of the prosperous Jaina community there. Of these about 224 pages contained at the commencement of Part II are dedicated to recount the story of the steady growth of the school from its inception to date. Its principal work has been in the field of education where the pursuit of a general curriculum is supplemented by spiritual training and cultural activities. But no less has been its interest in the field of reproducing standard works in Jaina literature. The school has already brought out a revised edition of Hemacandra's Kāvyānusāsana a celebrated work in Indian poetics, and is going ahead with an ambitious project of bringing out a critical edition of the Ardhamagadhi canon with its commentaries in Prakrit and Sanskrit. But it has done a little more specialisation in the production of commemoration volumes in which the present one under review was preceded in 1956 by another in honour of a Jaina Acarya Vijayavallabha Suri.
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