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1914
JAINA GAZETTE.
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edition which then was available ; but he collected the unfortunately 'very few manuscripts which he was able to procure for his use, and he wrote an introduction to his book which showed the great importance of Indian 'narrative literature for all the civilised world.
Benfey, after the French scholar Silvester de Sacy, thefirst editor of the Arabic version of Kalailah and Damnah, was one of those great pioneers in literary research who, fronr time to time, appear to open new witys for future generations ; but owing to the very scanty materials which were at his disposal, he could not possibly avoid grave misgivings in the results be arrived at. These mistakes as well as the splendid results of his work were at first accepted by the scholars as so many undeniable truths. Later on, doubts arose. Some of the weak points of Benfey's argumentation were recognised, and some scholars went as far as to throw over board also the most important traths which the great endologist had investigated.
Amongst these adversaries of Benfey's main thesis, by which he stated that most of the European fairy tales and many other stories were derived from Indian sources, there is, as far as I can see, only one who is able to read Sanskrit. But as this scholar, who has written a booklet on the influence of Indian tales on other literatures, knows only some of the few printed collections, and nothing at all of the huge mass. of the still nopublished manuscript of Indian story books, the only thing which he really has proved is his ignorance of the matter he is dealing with. On the other hand the best experts in the field of comparative story literature, though they do not understand any Indian language, e. g., Johannes Bolte, Emmanuel losquin and Victor Chauvin, whose death, which took place some months ago, was a very great loss for literary research, as before them Reinhold Koehler and Felix Liebrecht never doubted the Indian origin of a huge mass of fairy and other tales current amongst all the peoples of Northern and Western Asia, of Africa and of Europe ; and by negro slaves,
as Daehpardt has shown, such stories were even brought fron; Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
