Jainalogy In Western Publications

Author(s): Kenji Watanabe
Publisher: Kenji Watanabe

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Jain Studies in Honour of Jozef Deleu Edited by Rudy Smet and Kenji Watanabe HON-NO-TOMOSHA, Tokyo 1993
Preface
When Professor Deleu's former students expressed the wish to prepare a Felicitation Volume in his honour, we all readily agreed as we were glad to show our appreciation of the important work which Prof. Deleu has achieved in his unobtrusive way. His pupils will below recall how stimulating his lessons in all fields of Indology have been and how the general public also was able to benefit from his writings. Those who have had the privilege of meeting this unassuming colleague, as we did when he accepted the invitation to attend the International symposium on Jaina canonical and narrative literature in Strasbourg (16-19 June 1981), have been impressed by the part he took in the discus
sions, his many relevant remarks on many subjects and his generosity. Some . words should therefore be said concerning the debt which Jain studies, and philological research in particular, owe to Jozef Deleu.
In this field he first became known for his work on the literary genre called prabandha which flourished th Jain circles during the Middle Ages. Though his dissertation (in Dutch) on Rājasekhara's Prabandhakośa is not easily accessible, the main points of his research on two aspects of the prabandhas have gained a large audience, viz. his observations on 1) the language (especially the vocabulary) of these compositions, and 2) the "intricate interrelation of these texts". He succeeded in calling attention to the importance of the prabandhas “as (semi-)historiographic writings” and to the need for further research on the literary features of this genre. Although for nearly a century almost no attention had been paid to such texts, recently they have more than once been used as important documents. In this field J. Deleu can be seen as a forerunner.
Meanwhile J. Deleu had the privilege to study in the Seminar für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens an der Universität Hamburg, where he attended Ludwig Alsdorf's "inost enlightening lectures on Jaina Prakrit". What is more he was fortunate enough to be able to work with the eminent specialist on Jain canonical literature, Walther Schubring, with whom he soon became