Jain Stories 01

Author(s): Mahendramuni, K C Lalwani
Publisher: A B Jain Shwetambar Terapanth Samaj

Page 20

xvi.
followers took shelter in the church of Mahavira. It is thus certain that the Jaina church became united at the time of Mahavira
Many more things could have been written about these short stories, but I am afraid, a foreword to a book is not an appropriate place for this. So long, this vast storehouse remained confined to Prakrit and Sanskrit so that it was not available to the common man. Sparingly, it was used by a monk or a nun to illustrate a point here and there, but its wide use was not possible. About a quarter century back, it occured to some people that this material should be presented through the medium of modern Indian languages, notably Hindi, which the vast majority of the Jainas understand. But who was to do this? For, while some of the Jaina monks were well-read in Prakrit and Sanskrit, their proficiency in Hindi was not high, while the usual Hindi story writers were not acquainted with this field in Prakrit or Sanskrit which they did not know At this stage, Muni Mahendrakumarji Pratham stepped in to present a large number of Jaina stories verbatim in plain Hindi. Ten parts of these stories as retold by him appeared in print, about 100 pages or more in each part in double crown size, by 1961, and another 15 by 1971, so that the Muni has about 3,000 pages in print to his credit Provided his indifferent health permits, he desires to raise it to 10,000 pages which, he is sure enough, is a pretty easy job Since the Muni's works have been published, but quite independently of him, one or two writers have retold some Jaina stories through the medium of Hindi and Bengali by making use of modern technique of story writing, and making them more readable in the process, but the Muni's work remains to this date the most
massive
It was in 1969 that I was approached with a request to translate the stories into English. I was reluctant