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JULY, 1970
on researches in Jainology currently in progress in India. The Editor had preferred to put the whole thing in English in a recent issue of this Journal and he has already started receiving communication from scholars from abroad who are interested in Jainology.
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In terms of authors and dignitaries and works, the assortment presented in the volume has a wide coverage. Among the former, we have Haribhadra, Sthulabhadra, Siddhasena, Sripala, Vastupala, Kanakakusala, Hemacandra, Yasovijaya, Megharaja, Hemaratna and others and among the latter the more important, that have been used are Pramāṇa-mimānsā, Yogabindu, Pārasika-prakāśa, Vasudhārā-dhāraṇī, Bhagavadgita, Kuvalayamālā and Bhagavati Sutra. There are philosophical topics like jñāna, pratyakṣa, sat-asat, ātman, pariņāma, anekānta, etc. There are dogmatic topics too on prayascitta and samlekhana. Some papers are devoted to Jaina literature and philology while others deal Jaina art, history and archaeology. There are important plates, cluding a few in miniature paintings from early Jaina manuscripts. The overall production of the volume is pleasant and praiseworthy.
A review of a volume like this is easy as well as difficult. It is easy because there is no single thread connecting one article with another and the reviewer is at liberty to take specific notice of the more important ones. At the same time it is difficult because the contributions collected together cover a wide field, from general literature at one extreme to pecialised branches like art, archaeology, grammar, rhetoric, phonetics and mathematics. To review such a thing one need be a general practitioner rather than a specialist. Two observations may however be pertinent, one applying to all collections of articles which are often making appearance these days and another specific to the volume under review. A volume of collections to be more useful need follow a certain line of classification of articles, as has been done, for instance, in the case of the Ramakrishna Mission Publication entitled Cultural Heritage of India. When it is absent, as it often is in all Jaina Commemoration volumes the reviewer has come across, it causes a certain amount of bewilderment to the reader. This bewilderment has been increased in the case of the volume under review by the fact that the two bunches of articles in Gujarati have been set in two different parts at a distance of at least 728 pages from each other. A better presentation would have been to start with history of the school in Part I, followed by all the articles in Gujarati in the same part, duly classified of course, and to include the entire material in English and Hindi in the second part.
Coming to specific articles in Gujarati in Part I, the first article by Rasiklal C. Parikh considers Haribhadra Suri's Jñana-tattva-cintana.
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