Jinamanjari 1998 09 No 18

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

Page 50

protective storage obsolete, and provokes the question "how marginal the manuscripts are to the ongoing Jain identity (Cort 1995:86)." John Cort (1989:20-37) held against Edward Said's one-sided attack on western Orientalism that in fact "Jain dogma and Orientalist scholarship coincide in their valuation of the past over the present (p.27)," and that Western scholar pioneers merely accepted and repeated Jain normative statements as historical descriptions (p.39-40). However, this conclusion could only be reached by abstracting from the colonial context and the crucial role of the Jain scriptures in the late 19th century communal politics.
Strictly speaking a coincidence of interests was only emerging in the period after the forced 'opening' of the Jain libraries. In the 20th century many close contacts developed between western Jainologists and reformist Jain monks like Vijaydharmasūri (1868-1922) and Vijayindrasūri, who shared their scholarly interests. Moritz Winternitz (1926:351f.) for instance writes that he exchanged many letters with the 'free spirited' Vijaydharmasūri, who also sent him manuscripts, and helped him with the chapter on Jaina literature in his famous book History of Indian Literature. A personal meeting between the two men was already scheduled for October 1922, when Winternitz received the news of Vijaydharmasūri's death on the 5th of September 1922, and postponed his journey. He accepted, however, immediately Upadhyay Indravijay's invitation to attend the memorial ceremony starting on the 22nd of January 1923 in Shivpuri, where a temple (samādhimandir) in Vijaydharmasūri's honour was erected on the site of his cremation. The similarities and differences shared between the European Indologist and the Jain sādhu are well caught in Winternitz' description of his farewell from Indravijaya, who, Winternitz writes, emerged from his abode in the evening "cheerful and happy as ever":
It is remarkable how happy, calm and serene these monks are, despite the hard life which they lead. He asked me: "How many meals did you have today already?" I had to concede shamefully, that there had been four, whereupon he told me - not without an innocent joy, I cannot call it pride - that he had eaten nothing for 36 hours already, for he fasted in honour of the acarya. Curious as ever, he asked, how much salary I got per month, and how much of that I needed, and things like that. Then he asked, whether I believed in reincarnation and a soul. I had to answer in the negative. He could not imagine that one did not believe in reincarnation. Then indeed the whole doctrine of karman would be futile, and the people would not receive their due reward or
For Private44ersonal Use Only