Jainism And Western World

Author(s): Peter Flugel
Publisher: Peter Flugel

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over again. The original report, however, written ten years after the event and published in German in an Austrian weekly, has almost been forgotten. The following translation of the most significant passages of this report should therefore be of interest.
Bühler was the education inspector for a district of northem Gujarat, when he recived an order from the Viceroy in 1868 to access and catalogue the indigenous libraries of the region, and to buy manuscripts with the help of a Jain agent as source materials for the compilation of a digest of Hindu Law to he produced for European Universities (Johnson 1992:200). Ile undertook several joumeys through Gujarat in 1868, 1870, 1871 and 1872-3, before he decided to visit the famous Jain libraries in Jaisalmer and Bhatnir, which were first mentioned by James Tod (1830:282), who himself caught a glimpse of the Temacandra Bhandār at Patan with the help of his Khartar Gacch Jain Guru (Johnson 1992:1971T ). In his report Bühler described the importance and the disliculties of his task as follows:
DILIP K BOBRA 2072 E LAVIEVE TEMPE, AZ 85284
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These libraries are in part extraordinarily extensive and old. They contain many valuable manuscripts and often even works of the brahmanical literature, which are not available elsewhere. But they are under the supervision of a community committee, a socalled Panch, which only in very rare cases is prepared to grant curious Sanskritists access to its treasures. Mostly it requires a hard struggle, out of which the European not always emerges victorious (Bühler 1883:518).
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Particularly interesting is his description of two meetings with Jain monks. The first took place in the Parávanath temple in Randol, where Bühler copied some ancient copper plates and bought some scriptures for the Government. He writes:
DILIP K BOBRA 2072 E LAVIEVE TEMPE, AZ 85284
My agent received these from the monk naturally under the seal o discretion (Bühler does not mention his name). The latter seemed to he very happy with our visit and the business that was done later. In the afternoon he offered us a return visit, which such saints rarely do, and brought along a disciple, whom he educated to be a monk. According to his statement, he hought him during a famine in the year 1869 from his parents. Although the boy was only nine years old, he knew already large parts of the sacred scriptures by heart (522).