Progress of Prakrit and Jaina Studies

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

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two volumes in the Sacred Books of the East (Xos. 22, 45) that Jainism was an independent system. It is not my aim here to give a history of Jaina or Prākrit studies, but I want just to point out that after the scholarly efforts of pioneers like these Präktit has been considered to be an essential equipment for Indological studies based on original sources. Only about two years back I had an opportunity to visit centres of Indological studies in Europe, United States and Japan, and it was a pleasure to find that posthere a student was considered properly equipped in Sanskrit unless he had a work:able knowledge of Pali and Pralurit. This is as it should be. But the position is quite different in our own country, which is the home of all the three languages as well as of the culture which nourished and enriched them. It is an irony of fate that Prālirit of the language of the people was being looked down upon, and that the same attitude has continued even to this day. Among the Jainas the carliest exegetical literatare on the Canon-Xiryuktis, Bhāşyas and Cürnismis in Prākrit, but from the 8th century the drift towards Sanskrit is clearly visible and we get Sanskrit commentaries (like that by Haribhadrasūri) on the Canonical texts. That was because the Jainas had accepted Sanskrit by that time as the language of scholarship and high learning, and this intermingling of the two currents of Sanskrit and Prākrit was beneficial to both. Great secular collections of Prākrit verses like the Gathāsaptašati of king Häla have larger number of Sanskrit commentaries than even some of the most celebrated of Sanskrit classics. It is well-known to every student of poetics that very frequently the Sanskrit writers of Alank:āravoris quote Präknit Gáthás from the Gathāsaptašati and allied literature as illustrations. But think of an advanced student of Sanskrit in modern India studying a play like Mircchakatika (which is three-fourth Präkrit) with the help of Sanskrit Chāyā and trying to appreciate the poetic beauties of Präkrit lyrics quoted by the rhetoricians only through Sanskrit renderings ! It is evident that owing to their simultaneous employ.