________________
The Jaina Āgama Series In 1874 Ray Dhanpatsimhaji Bahadur started the work of publishing the Āgamas and brought out many of them. But the utility of these published texts was hardly greater than that of the original manuscripts because they were printed without punctuation marks, paragraphing, and word-division. Nevertheless, he deserves our thanks for making available to the scholars the Jaina Āgamas which were then very difficult to obtain.
The Kalpasūtra (1879) and the Ācārānga (1882) edited by Dr. Hermann Jacobi, the Aupapātika (1890) and the Avašyaka (1897) edited by Leumann, some portions of the Jñātādharmakathā (1881) edited by Steinthal, the Upāsakadašā (1890) edited by Hoernle, the Ācārānga (1910) and some of the Chedasūtras
(1918) edited by Schubring, etc.- in the publication of all these works the critical method of editing has been adopted. This was not done in the case of the edition of 32 Āgamas, published by Shri Lala Sukhdeva Sahaya in 1916–20 along with the Hindi translation by Shri Amolak Rishi, nor in that of the edition of the Agamas (along with their respective commentaries) the publication of which started in 1915 under the auspices of the Agamodaya Samiti.
The Āgamas ediled by Ācārya Śrī Sāgarānandasūrīśvarajī are superior to those edited by Ray Dhanpatsimhaji Bahadur from the point of view of correct readings as well as correct printing, and they have proved very useful to the scholars. The credit certainly goes to Acārya Sāgarānandasūrīśvarajī for whatever progress we have achieved in the study of Jaina religion and philosophy ever since the publication of his edition. Despite all this the need for a critical edition of the Āgamas still remains to be fulfilled. In 1943 there was established the Srī Jaināgama Prakāśinī Samsad with the aim of publishing the Agamas, by Muni Shri Punyavijayaji, who had been making, throughout the last forty years of his life, such efforts as would make possible the publication of a critical edition of all the Agamas. Not only that, but he had made successful attempts to correct the text reading of the Āgamas on the basis of the quotations from them found in other works.
As a result of these efforts of the Late Respected Muni Shri Punyavijayaji Maharaj, a committee was formed in the year 1964 by the Shri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya (Gowalia Tank Road, Bombay 16) to publish a critical edition of the Jaina Āgamas. It was decided to accept the following six principles in critically editing the texts of the Jaina Āgama:
