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JAIN JOURNAL
Since education is an important window to the past and equips man for the future, any institution that is dedicated to this commendable role is rendering useful service, and by this criterian the school has reason to be proud of its achievement during the past half a century of its existence. During this period, it has trained many that have left a mark on the life of the society and brought it within the main stream of contemporary life. The Gujarati version of the life-story of the school in Part II is fairly exhaustive ; but the reviewer feels that since the story is one of much wider interest, a summary of this in English, if not a verbatim rendering of the entire 224 page material into that language, would have brought it within the grasp of the wider world of academicians who do not have the equipment of the Gujarati language. The suggestion may be worth keeping in view at the time of the diamond jubilee of the school a few years hence.
In the educational sphere of this country, linguistic diversity is fast becoming a barrier between one region and another, and at a not very distant future we Indians between one region and another may be confronted with a situation in which we understand the foreigners better than we do one another. When this happens, particularly in the field of research, we may not know what people are really doing in different parts of this country. On international plane, to resolve such a difficulty, important documents use English and French side by side. In this country, where we have more than a dozen officially recognised regional languages, and since these are being increasingly used these days, much output, particularly in the field of research may but evoke a limited interest and may be virtually non-existent for the rest who do not have the equipment of a particular language. It is time therefore we start the practice of providing in English a summary of important findings of all the research papers produced in regional languages including Hindi so that they may not get lost to the world of scholarship.
ervation should assume great relevance in the context of the volume currently under review where not only the history of the school but the majority of research papers on themes of Jaina cultural interest, this latter portion alone running over a little less than 600 pages--are produced in Gujarati. The plea should not be misconstrued as a disparagement of a regional language which can be developed only through increasing use; the intention is to impress the necessity of bringing the outcome of research within the reach of a wider world of scholarship. For this still English is an invaluable medium. In this connection the reviewer cites an instance which the editor of this Journal only recently brought to his notice. A couple of years back, Sramana, the Journal of the P.V. Research Institute, Varanasi, had printed an article in Hindi
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