Progress of Prakrit and Jaina Studies

Author(s): Bhogilal J Sandesara
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

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Mr. N. C. Mehta India has lost one of the doyens of Art studies, and his loss will be felt for a long time.
May the souls of these devotees of learning rest in peace!
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The study of Prākrits is a comparatively neglected field in the domain of Indology. Sanskrit dramas have dialogues in Prakrit, but they are still studied generally with the help of Sanskrit Chāyā. The inscriptions of Aśoka are the earliest written documents in Prakrit, and their importance in the study of the history and culture of India can never be overstressed. The culture of ancient India had found expression in three literary mediums, viz., Sanskrit, Pāli and Prakrit. At least a workable knowledge of these is essential to understand and appreciate the heritage of India in original sources. The discovery of Sanskrit' in the West was mainly responsible for the birth of the science of Comparative Philology, and its usefulness was proved and accepted even in the various fields of learning other than Indology. Buddhism in its Hinayana form is the religion of many countries of Asia, and the attention of European scholars was first drawn to Pāli, in which all the ancient literature of Hinayana is composed. The Pali Text Society was cstablished in London and it brought out in Roman characters the editions of almost all the important Pāli texts which were formerly available only in Sinhalese, Burmese or Thai scripts, and that gave a great fillip to the study of Pali and Buddhism.
That was not the case with Prakrit and Jainism. There was a time when Jainism was considered to be an offshoot of Buddhism on account of many similarities between the two. Dr. Weber was the first European scholar who gave a detailed account of the Canonical literature of the Jainas in a long German essay, which was later translated into English and published in the Indian Antiquary (vols. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21). Dr. Jacobi showed conclusively in the Introduction to his edition of the Kalpasūtra (Leipzig, 1879) and also in the Introductions to his translations of some Jaina Canonical works published in