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FOREWORD
It will be readily accepted that the basis of all civilization and culture is intellectual activity of man. But the earliest human thoughts and feelings were all lost to us for want of any material preservation of the same. A new age dawned when the thought-activity began to find expression in various kinds of crafts and arts. This may be said to be the dawn of history. It was however at a very late stage that man learnt to express his thoughts in language and record the same in some material form. Thus literature began to grow, human knowledge began to accumulate and each generation grew wiser and wiser by the recorded ideas and experiences of their predecessors. Art collections and literaries may therefore be said to be the most valuable part of national wealth, as on them is based the pride of heritage and the pace of future progress.
During the last few centuries every progressive country has not only adopted serious measures to preserve all its ancient art and literary treasures, but has also taken steps to discover even those archaelogical remains which lie hidden underground. And it is on all these finds that the magnificent structure of history has been built.
Amongst these sources of history and culture the literary monuments of the past ages rank supreme Unfortunately, in our country the search for old manuscripts though going on for atleast one century, has not yet been exhausted. Numerous manuscript-stores attached to public temples and private libraries have not yet been properly catalogued and even a casual inspection brings to light valuable works unknown so far. This is particularly the case with the Jaina libraries known as Shastrs Bhandars, Dr. H D. Velankar listed no less than 121 catalogues of Mss in his Jinaratna-kośa published in 1944. Many more catalogues have since been published the most important of them being those of Jaisalmer and Rajsthan Shastra Bhandars in several volumes.
In the compilation and publication of the Rajasthan catalogues Dr. Kastoorchand Kashiwal played an important role, and he followed up his efforts by a research thesis on "Jaina Grantha Bhandars in Rajasthan" which was approved by the University of Rajasthan for the award of the Ph. D. Degree. It is very gratifying to know that this valuable work is now being published. The wealth of information brought together in this volume will, I am sure, be found to be very useful to those who are interested in the search for MSS. So for as I know, it is for the first time
