Muni Jambuvijayji Homage and reminiscences

Author(s): Nalini Balbir
Publisher: ZZ_Anusandhan

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Muni Jambūvijayaji Homage and reminiscences
PROF. NALINI BALBIR
The 12th November 2009 will remain as a gloomy day for everyone as it brought the shocking and sad news that a jewel of knowledge and kindness has suddenly disappeared from this earth.
I am not among the scholars who sat in long discussing sessions with Muni Jambūvijayaji, but I had the privilege to meet him and have his darshan a few times during the last 30 years. Each meeting, however short it was, was inspiring and ennobling. Keen on teaching one topic or another of dharma and emphasizing the importance of vegetarianism, Muni Jambūvijayaji never failed to mention the name of his guru (and father), Muni Bhuvanavijaya, and Sankheshwar, a place where he always used to go back. His mother, an aged nun, was often around, in the sadhvi upāśraya. During one of my first stays in Gujarat, in 1980, I went with Dr. Kanubhai V. Sheth to Pātari, a remote village near Upariyala and Viramgam, where Muni Jambūvijayaji was staying for the rainy-season. I was transfixed by this encounter, my first one with a Jain monk, and by the vyākhyāna which he delivered later in the afternoon. It was easy to see how much respected he was by all. I felt extremely moved when Muni Jambūvijayaji presented me with the first volume of his edition of Hemacandra's Yogaśastra with svopajñavṛtti, which, indeed, was the most appropriate book for me to read at that stage of my studies. The clarity of this edition, one among many others that Muniji has to his credit, and the vast erudition displayed in the critical apparatus which renders full justice to the wealth of material contained in the vṛtti by providing so much information, textual parallels, etc. are impressive. I was so keen to make this stimulating work known to others that I decided to write a detailed review of it (published in Journal