Book Title: Progress of Prakrit and Jaina Studies
Author(s): Bhogilal J Sandesara
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

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Page 26
________________ 22 in 23 volumes. The first volume of the commentary Dhavalā was published in 1939, its sixteenth volume along with the seventh volume of the Mahabandha has been published now. The editors and publishers, especially Dr. Hiralal Jain, deserve congratulations on their achievement. It is wonderful that such voluminous literature, critically edited and carefully translated, could be published within two decades, though the chief editor had to attend to many other pressing duties. A critical study of this vast literature should begin now. The main subject of these works is the principle of Karma, which is so to say the soul of Jaina philosophy. Nowhere else has it been treated so exhaustively and with so much minuteness as in these worksin the Prakrit Sutra and its commentaries. Many a work of the Digambara as well as Svetambara tradition has been devoted to the various aspects of the principle of Karma, and a historical study of all this literature should be undertaken in order to understand and appreciate the evolution of the principle and its various corollaries. Another notable work is Jambudvipaprajñaptisangraha of Padmanandi edited by Dr. A. N. Upadhye and Dr. Hiralal Jain, with a Hindi translation by Pt. Balachandra and an Introduction in Hindi on the Mathematics of Trilokaprajñapti by Prof. Laxmichandra Jain (Sholapur, 1958). This is a work on Jaina Cosmography in 2,499 Prakrit Gāthās, and was composed probably in Rajasthan in the 10th or 11th century A.D. It was an excellent idea to publish this work immediately after the Trilokaprajñapti. In the Ardha-magadhi Canon there are some works dealing with this subject, viz., Sūryaprajñapti, Candraprajñapti, Jambudvipaprajñapti and Jyotiṣkaraṇḍaka, and there are many other post-Canonical texts like Lokaprakāśa of Vinayavijaya dealing with this subject. It would be highly interesting to make a comparative study of the Digambara and Śvetāmbara texts on this topic. The long essay of 110 pages about Ganita of the Trilokaprajñapti is an able attempt to study and interpret the ancient lore in the context of the mod

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