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APRIL, 1978
115
The Jaina community, although numerically a very small minority in the Indian population, is diffused in almost all the parts of the subcontinent. Its members are generally well-to-do, with a very high percentage of literacy and education and are engaged in almost all the learned professions, in industry, trade and commerce, in agriculture, arts and crafts. Moreover, they are the custodians of a very rich cultural heritage, representing one of the most ancient living religious and cultural systems of India. As such, they have been a living part of the mainstream of Indian life and benefited by and contributed substantially to the Indian re-awakening and renaissance and the struggle for freedom. Quite early in the day, therefore, they also realised the value of journalism, may be it was primarily for the benefit of their own community. And, when they started publishing their journals, the latter soon multiplied, and came to be published in almost all the current major languages of the country and from almost all its provinces.
The first Jaina journal was the Gujarati weekly Jain Divakar, published in 1875 at Ahmedabad, the first Hindi weekly was the Jain Patrika (Allahabad, 1880), followed by the Jaina (Farrukhabad, 1884), the first Urdu weekly was the Jiyalal Prakash (Farrukhabad, 1884), and the first Marathi paper was the Jain Bodhak (Solapur, 1884) which still survives and is one of the oldest living Jaina journals. The first English journal was the monthly Jaina Gazette, started in 1903 and continuing till 1950. The first in Tamil was the Dharmasilana (Madras, 1920), in which year were also published the first three Kannad journals, the Jinavijaya (Belgaon), Vishvabandhu (Mysore) and Sarvarthasiddhi (Bangalore). The first women's journal in Hindi, the Jain Mahiladarsha appeared from Surat in 1921, and the first Bengali magazine, Jinavani, from Calcutta in 1923.
During this a little more than a hundred years of Jaina journalism, some 400 journals have seen the light of the day. Of these the weeklies numbered approximately 35, fortnightlies 25, monthlies 260, bi-monthlies 5, quarterlies 15, six-monthlies 5, annual 15, rest of unknown periodicity. Languagewise, some 275 were Hindi, 75 Gujarati, 25 Marathi, 15 English, 10 Urdu, 6 Kannada, 6 Tamil, 3 Bengali and 2 Sanskrit journals. ProvinceWise figures were Maharashtra 78, Rajasthan 77, Uttar Pradesh 75, Gujarat 45, Delhi 40, Madhya Pradesh 35, Bengal 25, Tamil Nadu 7, PunjabHaryana 7, Karnataka 6, Bihar 6, Andhra 4, Assam 1, and Nagaland 1.
At present, about 125 Jaina periodicals are being published --Hindi 88, Gujarati 19, Marathi 7, English 7 (one of these being bi-lingual and two tri-lingual), Kannada 1, Tamil 2, and Bengali 1. Of these the monthlies
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