Jinamanjari 1998 09 No 18

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

Page 49

205). But during his second visit to Patan in the year 1874 he found that "The Panţit (of the Hemacandra Bandhār] had to sue for many months in vain, as the leading Jains feared that some sinister attempt against the books might be intended when the new catalogue had been prepared (Bühler 1881:44)." Their reasoning was compelling:
The 1868 act does not specify what would be the ultimate disposition of the manuscripts and most Indians feared they would go to Europe and thus not be available in India. The response was not to sell or give their precious titles to Bühler or the other collectors. After much debate the Government of India decided that the manuscripts collected under the auspices of the program would remain in India. The research program now had the possibility of evolving into a meaningful vehicle to support Sanskrit research in India (Johnson 1992:201f.).
The study of the materials collected by Bühler ultimately led to Jacobi's (1884) textual proof that Jainism originated independently from Buddhism, for which he was honoured with the title Jaina Darsana Divākara during his visit to the All India Jaina Literary Conference in Jodhpur 27.12.1913 (Glasenapp 1925:77. His work was particularly well-received by the leading members of the Bhārat Jain Mahāmaņdal, which was founded in Bombay 1882 (The Times 3.7.1882:5), because it could be used as evidence for overturning the judgement of the Calcutta High Court "to force the British Indian courts to recognise the faith of the Jainas as a separate religion, and not as a mere sect of the Hindus, and to raise the status of the relevant Jain scriptures" (Derrett 1976:4).
Three Digambara Jain lawyers in particular, Padmaraja Pandit, Jugrhandir Lal Jaini (1881-1927), and Champat Rai Jain (1867-1942), were instrumental in getting this judgement reversed by publishing Jain sacred scriptures and selected translations from Jain legal-texts as a proof of the independent existence of 'Jaina Law'. In so doing they had to rally against the continuing policy of secrecy of the Jain Mahāsabhā, which, according to C.R. Jain, "repeatedly passed resolutions against printing. The effect of this has been that the world has not yet known what Jainism is like (1926:8)."
Nowadays printing and translating Jain scriptures is more or less taken for granted, and there are no inhibitions to the world-ride dissemination of Jain religious knowledge anymore. However, the advent of printed editions, which at first were met with the same resistance as the technique of writing a thousand years before, makes
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