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BOOK REVIEW
BHAGAVATI SUTRA Vol. I: Prakrit Text with English translation & notes by K. C. Lalwani : Jain Bhawan, Calcutta, 1973 : Pages XV + 335 : Price Rs. 40.00.
The Bhagavatī Sūtra by Sudharma Svamin is an ancient Jaina work of a cyclopedic nature going back to the 5th-6th centuries A.D., which has been elevated to the status of a canonical work. The religious literature of the Jainas is of an astonishing extent and variety, and it fully rivals that of the Brahmanas and the Buddhists, of the Tamil Saivas and Vaishnavas, and of the Sikhs. Owing to the rather abstruse and philosophical nature of a good deal of this literature, to make it popular and not scholarly in its appeal mostly, it had to be brought down to the masses by means of a secondary or ancillary series of writings, equally vast in quantity, of legends and stories, of 'historical and edifying tales, of sermons and discourses, which would be difficult to match anywhere in the world. This huge mass of Jaina religious literature is written in various forms of Indo-Aryan-old, middle and new, or Sanskrit, Prakrit and Bhāṣā. The oldest texts going back to the times of Mahavira, the last great Jaina teacher in the line of the 24 Jinas or Tirthankaras, c. 600 B.C., or connected with his immediate disciples, are in ArdhaMagadhi Prakrit, a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect current in what is now Eastern Uttar-Pradesh in North India, which reflects the actual home language of Mahavira. The huge mass of other philosophical and narrative literature is in Sanskrit and also in various Prakrits and Apabhramsa, and in old Gujarati, Old Rajasthani and Middle Brajbhasa and Hindi.
The Bhagavati as one of the canonical texts, is composed in Ardha Magadhi. This is a huge work in itself, and it is an authoritative compendium of Jaina lore in earlier phase of its development which goes back to original sources. A good deal of the oldest canonical literature has been studied and translated into European languages like English and German, by European scholars of Jainism during the last hundred and twenty-five years, and Indian scholars also have done their best in editing and explaining these texts frequently with Gujrati and Hindi translations. But a bigger amount has been left untouchedthe field is wide, the workers few.
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