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JAIN JOURNAL : Vol-XXXIV, No. 1 July 1999
him, and once, when I sent him a copy of a book which I found in Jaisalmer and had printed later, I received a friendly letter of acknowledgement in Sanskrit.
The beginning of my scientific activities looked promising. Already two days after our arrival on the 18th we were guided to the temple of Parishnath in the fort, in whose vaults the great library was kept. A number of manuscripts were brought to us, amongst which were many extraordinarily old ones dating from the 12th century of our era. Until the year 1873 one did not at all know that manuscripts existed in India, which went back to the year 1258. But the most important European colleagues, like Müller, Weber and Aufrecht, still doubted the authenticity of the dates. My joy therefore was not small, when I suddenly got to see manuscripts which were even 150 years older, and I was not less pleased, when I found amongst these works, apart from the religious works of the Jainas, important books of the brahmanical literature, and amongst the latter a really old history work, the life of the famous Chaulukya-prince Vikramāditya V. of Kalyāna, which was written around 1158 before Christ by his courtpoet, the Kashmiri Bilhana. There was no question of its being a fake and I felt that I had found something which made my journey a successful one. Unfortunately my joy was soon tainted. Already after three days, during which we saw, catalogued, and checked about 50 books, it was suddenly said, that this was to be all for now. Instead of books only some heaps of loose leaves were brought to us, the inspection of which was very toilsome. Then the librarian led one of the people of the Mahārāwal once more down into the vault and convinced him, that nothing else was left in the opened room. I was very angry about this report, which did not convince me, and mocked the committee that the world-famous library of Jaisalmer should only contain 50 manuscripts, to stir their ambitions to show us more. But the answer remained : We have nothing else.
So I had to retract provisionally, putting a good face on it, and borrowed the most important manuscripts, partly to copy myself, and partly to have them copied. But I promised myself to pay the Jaina committe the anger back with interest. During the next days I worked calmly with Dr. Jacobi on the copy of the historical work, which I, because the characters were very archaic, wished to do myself. In doing so I made inquiries about the library in secret through my agent. But no one apart from the committee of the Jainas and the librarian had ever seen it. The reports were thus not very certain or clear. At last my friend, the Shripuj, helped me. He too could not come to know anything directly, but he said: "If the books, which you have seen, did
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