Nandisutt and Anuogaddaraim

Author(s): Devvachak, Aryarakshit, Punyavijay, Dalsukh Malvania, Amrutlal Bhojak
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 149

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have turned their attention towards the Āgamas and have agreed to use them for the purposes mentioned.
Modern scholars, down to the present day, have not evinced as much interest in the study of Jaina literature-particularly the Agamas—as they have in the study of its Vedic and Buddhist counterparts. There are many reasons for the neglect of the study of the Āgamas. One of them is the absence of a good edition of these texts. The Jaina Āgamas are a living literature. They have been edited and published by a number of religious personalities. But there exists not a single edition which contains all the Āgamas, which is handy and which is such as can easily be used by modern scholars. Stray attempts have been made in this direction but the task has not been carried out in a systematic manner--with a determinate plan in view. Indeed the critical edition of all the Āgamas was a long-felt need.
For the publication of the Jaina Āgamas, many individuals and many Institutes have made attempts during all these years. In 1848 A.D. Stevenson published for the first time an English translation of the Kalpasūtra; but that translation was not upto the mark. Really speaking, Prof. Weber deserves to be called the pioneer in the field of the Agama-publication. In 1865-66 he edited some portions of the Bhagavatīsūtra and appended notes that embody the important results of his study of the same.
In 1874 A.D. Ray Dhanpatsimhaji Bahadur started the work of publishing the Agamas and brought out many of them. But the utility of these published texts was almost equal to that of the original mss. because they were printed without punctuation marks, paragraphing and word-division. Nevertheless, he deserves our thanks for making available to the scholars the Jaina Āgamas which were then very difficult to obtain.
The Kalpasūtra (1879 A.D.) and the Acaranga (1882 A.D.) edited by Dr. Herman Jacobi; the Aupapātika (1890 A.D.) and the Avaśyaka (1897 A.D.) edited by Leumann; some portions of Jñātādharmakatha (1881 A.D.) edited by Steinthal; the Upasakadaśa (1890 A.D.) edited by Hoernle; the Acāranga (1910 A.D.) and some of the Chedasūtras (1918 A.D.) edited by Schubring; etc.-in the publication of all these works the critical method of editing has been adopted, a method approved by modern scholars. But it is unfortunate that the same was not done in the case of the edition of 32 Āgamas published by Shri Lala Sukhdeva Sahaya in 1916-20 A.D. along with a Hindi translation by Shri Amolak Rşi; nor in that of the edition of the Āgamas (along with their respective commentaries) the publication of which started in 1915 A. D. under the auspices of the Āgamodaya Samiti,