Jain Journal 1999 07

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

Page 10

JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXIV, No. 1 July 1999 founded in Bombay 1882 (The Times 3.7.1882:5), because it could be used as evidence for overturning the judgement of the Calcutta High Court "to force the British Indian courts to recognise the faith of the Jainas as a separate religion, and not as a mere sect of the Hindus, and to raise the status of the relevant Jain scriptures" (Derrett 1976:4). Three Digambar Jain lawyers in particular, Padmaraja Pandit, Jugrhandir* Lal Jaini (1881-1927), and Champat Rai Jain (1867-1942), were instrumental in getting this judgement reversed by publishing Jain sacred scriptures and selected translations from Jain legal-texts as a proof of the independent existence of Jaina Law'. In so doing they had to rally against the continuing policy of secrecy of the Jain Mahasabha, which, according to C.R. Jain, "repeatedly passed resolutions against printing. The effect of this has been that the world has not yet known what Jainism is like" (1926:8). Nowadays printing and translating Jain scriptures is more or less taken for granted, and there are no inhibitions to the world-wide dissemination of Jain religious knowledge anymore. However, the advent of printed editions, which at first were met with the same resistance as the technique of writing a thousand years before, makes protective storage obsolete, and provokes the question "how marginal the manuscripts are to the ongoing Jain identity" (Cort 1995:86).
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John Cort (1989:20-37) held against Edward Said's one-sided attack on western Orientalism that in fact "Jain dogma and Orientalist scholarship coincide in their valuation of the past over the present" (p. 27), and that western scholar pioneers merely accepted and repeated Jain normative statements as historical descriptions (p. 39-40). However, this conclusion could only be reached by abstracting from the colonial context and the crucial role of the Jain scriptures in the late 19th C. communal politics. Strictly speaking a coincidence of interests was only emerging in the period after the forced 'opening' of the Jain libraries. In the 20th century many close contacts developed between western Jainologists and reformist Jain monks like Vijayadharmasūri (1868-1922) and Vijayindrasūri, who shared their scholarly interests. Moritz Winternitz (1926:351f.) for instance writes that he exchanged many letters with the 'free spirited' Vijayadharmasūri, who also sent him manuscripts, and helped him with the chapter on Jaina literature in his famous book History of Indian Literature. A personal meeting between the two men was already scheduled for October 1922, when Winternitz received the news of Vijayadharmasuri's death on the 5.9.1922, and postponed his journey.
Is it Jagmander Lal Jaini? The spelling with -rh- (?) seems to be a mistype for ma [Editor].