Outline of Avasyaka Literature

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

Page 56

E. Leumann, An outline of the Avaśyaka literature
years after Mahāvīra), as well as of the "fictitious" Bhadrabahu, who produced the niryukti collection, and whom Leumann places around 80 CE, receive considerable attention.
Especially valuable is the detailed chapter on Jinabhadra's (incomplete) Viseṣāvasyaka-bhāṣya, about its original version, and about the textual recension of the commentator Silanka, as well as about the recension by the first Hemacandra. The Vedic and philosophical citations extracted by Leumann from Jinabhadra's work are very interesting. This is the case also for numerous other specimens from the contents of the Bhāṣya, like the passages which relate to the teaching about perception, Jaina doctrinal history, the principle of permutation and much more. Lastly, the discussion concerns Jinabhadra's lost auto-commentary on his Bhāṣya, which is known only through the commentators Sīlānka, Hemacandra, and others. The last two pages of the Übersicht contain the beginning of an analysis of other works by Jinabhadra.
I regret that I have been able to give here only a superficial overview of the contents of this work. It contains such an impressive mass of extremely valuable and interesting material from different angles that it makes going into details impossible. As in the case of pathbreaking achievements in the field of Khotanese, to which Leumann dedicated the last decades of his life, science will be grateful to him for this posthumous fragment, which is a fundamental tool of Jaina research.
[The third review written by W. Printz and published in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 90, 1936, p. 499 is short and does not bring anything new. Hence its translation is not included here].
VIII. Ernst Leumann : Selected biographic and bibliographical information
Biographical information
11 April 1859
1867
1867 and following years
1877 and following years
1880
1881
Birth of Ernst Leumann in Berg (Dist. Thurgau, German-speaking part of Switzerland), as the elder son of a Protestant clergyman.
Birth of his brother Julius (d. 1945). Schooling in Frauenfeld. Leumann was specially impressed by two of his teachers, who attracted his interest towards mathematics on the one hand, and towards Sanskrit and comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages on the other. Studies at the University of Zürich and Geneva (under Paul Oltramare), then at Leipzig (under Ernst Windisch, 18441918).
Initiated into Jaina studies by Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) at the University of Berlin.
Doctorate Degree obtained in Leipzig for
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