Jinamanjari 1998 09 No 18

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 40

Jinamañjari, Volume 18, No.2, October 1998
Jainism and the Western World Jinmuktisuri and Georg Bühler and Other Early Encounters Dr. Peter Flügel, London, United Kingdom
It is puzzling to the student of religion that even though in 1867 the Calcutta High Court decided that Jainism is not an independent religion, sixty years later it was widely depicted as a 'world-religion' by virtue of it's universal principles of non-violence and world-renunciation and the existence of an independent body of sacred scriptures (Glasenapp 1925:316). One of the many paradoxes of Jain history is that books. which initially were considered to be products of acts of violence, became objects of religious veneration itself, and as such, from the 11th century onwards, were hidden away from the public eye in subterranean bhaṇḍhārs, or treasure houses, in fear of persecution and plundering, only to be unearthed by Jain lawyers and European Indologists in the 19th century as proof for the independent existence of the Jain religion vis a vis the emerging Hindu Law.
The history of the opening of the Jain libraries is still to be written, but for the moment three views prevail. One school of thought attributes this achievement to the protest of reform-minded Jain laity against the illegitimate privileges of the yatis, or property-owning monks, who supplied the majority of the few remaining Jain ascetics at the beginning of the 19th century and often controlled access to the bhaṇḍhārs. Others have pointed to the efforts of monastic reformers, like Ātmārām (1837-1896), Vijayvallabhsūri (1870-1954) and others, to publish the Jain scriptures, while many western Academics continue to recite the Orientalist narrative of the western 'discovery' of the Jain bhandhars, which critics rather want to portray as a story of imperialist plunder. It is this version of the events which will be the prime concern of this paper.
The central stage belongs to the Sanskritists Georg Bühler (1837-1898) and Hermann Jacobi (1850-1937), who in the year 18731874 travelled together to the famous library of Jaisalmer "in order to make its contents accessible to science (Bühler 1875:82)." The fascinating story of Bühler's journey from Disa via Sirohi and Jodhpur to Jaisalmer and on to Bikaner in company of the young Hermann Jacobi belongs to the stock of Orientalist legends which are re-told over and
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