Outline of Avasyaka Literature

Author(s): Ernst Leumann, George Baumann
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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E. Leumann, An outline of the Avaśyaka literature
– Rudolf Hoernle (1841-1918) was born in India (in Sekundra, near Agra, where his father was a missionary) and occupied various posts there from 1856 to 1899, before returning to England in 1900. Among his numerous achievements, those which are more relevant here are his editions of several pattāvalīs (in Indian Antiquary 19, 1890; 20, 1891; 21, 1892) which are an important contribution to Jaina history as well as his edition cum translation of the seventh Anga of the Svetāmbara canon, the Uvāsagadasão, for which he considered Abhayadeva's commentary extensively (Bibliotheca Indica, 1888-90).
p. I [1437-40] "These are Bühler, Kielhorn, Jacobi, Peterson (whose untimely death is painful, not only for Jaina philology), Gopal Bhandarkar, Rājendralāla Mitra, Bendall and Hultzsch": see above for Bühler, Jacobi and Bhandarkar. – Franz Kielhorn (1840-1908) was appointed to the Educational Department of the Government of India in the Bombay Presidency, and was in India from 1866 to 1881, before returning to Germany where he became professor of Sanskrit at the University of Göttingen. That his name comes together with that of Bühler is but natural, for the two scholars worked together in India. They initiated the “Bombay Sanskrit Series”, and, more relevant here, laid down work connected with the search for Sanskrit manuscripts in Western India. After Bühler's departure from India, Kielhorn was alone in charge of the work: see, for instance, Kielhorn's Report on the Search for Sanskrit manuscripts in the Bombay Presidency during the year 1880-81, Bombay, 1881 (Preface reprinted in F. Kielhorn's Kleine Schriften, vol. I, Wiesbaden, 1969, pp. 65-76), which concerns, in particular, ancient Jaina libraries of Cambay and Patan, in search for palm-leaf manuscripts. See also F. Kielhorn, Proposal sanctioned by government for the preparation of a Catalogue of Sanskrit manuscripts belonging to the Government of Bombay, Poona, 30 Nov. 1881. A lot of Kielhorn's work concerns Indian epigraphy, and Jaina inscriptions in particular. - Peter Peterson (1847-1899), who was born in the Shetland Isles and studied Sanskrit at Edinburgh and Oxford, had a comparatively short life. He was Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Bombay from 1873 to the end of his life. Apart from editing several Sanskrit works of importance, he played an immense role in the search for Indian manuscripts in the Bombay Presidency: see below the note on p. III for his Reports (and more in the obituary notice by E.J. Rapson in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 31, 1899, pp. 917-919). - Rājendralāla Mitra (1822-1891), a Bengali scholar and writer, worked with the Bengal Asiatic Society. He was the first editor of several Sanskrit texts, and recognized by his contemporaries as a scholar of great achievements. Specially appointed for the search of Sanskrit manuscripts, he gave an account of them in the ten volumes of his Notices of Sanskrit Manuscripts (1870-1883). See Sushil Kumar De, Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century, Calcutta, 1962, pp. 628-638 for more information. - Cecil Bendall (1856-1906) was the Director of the Sanskrit Department at the British Museum in London, and later became Sanskrit professor at the University of Cambridge. He played an extremely important part in expanding the collections of Indian manuscripts in general, Buddhist and Jaina in particular, at the British Museum. - Eugen Julius Theodor Hultzsch (1857-1927) is best known for his contribution to epigraphy and palaeography. From 1886 to 1903 he was posted in South India and undertook a large number of field trips all around South India in order to take rubbings of inscriptions and collect manuscripts. He was assisted in this task by
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