Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): J L Jaini, F W Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Page 13

PRELIMINARY NOTE
The fact of Jainism cannot have been unknown even to the earliest European students of Sanskrit ; indeed, it is more than once mentioned by Sir William Jones himself. But the contemporary existence of the monuments, literature, and adherents of the religion seems to have been first brought to light by those two indefatigable pioneers of Indian research, Colonel Colin Mackenzie and Dr. Buchanan-Hamilton : it was not long before its main tenets were expounded by Colebrooke, whose library of Sanskrit MSS. comprised a fair number of Jaina texts. The full exploration of the canonical literature and the determination of the true chronology were reserved for a later generation of scholars, among whom the greatest merit belongs to Professors Weber, Jacobi, Leumam, and Dr. Hoernle as regards the former task, and to Professors Bühler and Jacobi as regards the latter. In all systematic accounts of Indian literature and religion the Jaina doctrine has necessarily found a place ; but the present