Jain Journal 1976 04

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

Page 47

DR. HIRALAL JAIN
Among Jaina luminaries of modern times, the late Professor Hiralal Jain, M.A., LL.B., D.Lit., occupied a very eminent position. An erudite scholar, reputed teacher and research guide, authoritative commentator and editor of ancient Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhramsha texts, linguist and philologist, he was chiefly responsible for popularising the study of Apabhramsha language and literature and getting them introduced in the curriculum of several universities. If Jainology has come to be recognised as an important branch of Indology and oriental studies, the credit goes to Professor Hiralal, his close associate Dr. A. N. Upadhye and several other Jaina colleagues no less than to foreign Indologists and orientalists and a band of non-Jaina Indian savants. The ground had already been prepared by a number of Jaina pioneers like Pandit Lalan, Gopaldas Baraiya, J. L. Jaini, C. R. Jain, P. C. Nahar, Brahmachari Sital Prasad, Nathu Ram Premi, Jugal Kishore Mukhtar, Sukhlal Sanghwi, C. J. Shah, Kalyanvijaya and Jinavijaya. These pioneers and their colleagues, no doubt, did the tremendous spade work, critically examining ancient texts, re-interpreting and evaluating their contents and attempting to reconstruct, at least, the literary history of the Jainas. Professor Hiralal Jain and his contemporaries, who constituted the second generation of the modern Jaina scholars, helped to provide Jaina studies with a scientific basis and research technique acceptable to the university men of the present day.
Born, about the beginning of the present century, in a well-to-do, respectable and religious-minded Parwar family of Digambara Jain persuasion, in a village (probably Balaghat) in what is now the Madhya Pradesh, Hiralal was the son of Seth Balchand Modi and passed his