Prolegomena to Prakritica et Jainica

Author(s): Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Asiatic Society

Page 12

FOREWORD
It is indeed a pleasure on my part to publish this present booklet entitled Prolegomena to Prakritica et Jainica on the occasion of a National Seminar on Prakrit and Jainism to be held on the 11th and 12th of March 2005 organised by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta. This book, though short in size, will give a kaleidoscopic view of some of the basic notions of the subject for which this Seminar is going to be held. This book will act as a torch-bearer for those who want to travel over the land of Prakrit and Jainism.
For more than two hundred years and a quarter of a century, this Asiatic Society has been serving the scholarly world by publishing oriental books and papers on Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Tibetan, Arabic, Persian and others. The Asiatick Researches was a pioneering Journal where some of the articles on basic oriental subjects were published. There is hardly any oriental book at a later stage where the publications of the Asiatic Society are not mentioned. In the Asiatick Researches, Vol. IX, 1807, three reports under the title Account of the Jains were published. It was immediately followed by Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Observations on the sects of the Jains. The Journal of the Asiatic Society has also published many pioneering articles on Prakrit and Jainism. Similarly, the Jaina Agama text, Uvāsagadasā-sutta in two volumes (text 1885-1890 and translation 1888, reprinted in 1989 by the Society) and the Prakrit grammar, Prāksta-lakşaņa of Canda (1880), are still the outstanding works in the field of Prakrit. So it seems that the Asiatic Society carries a long history and heritage for the dissemination of Prakrit and Jainistic studies in this country. It is, therefore, quite in the fitness of things that the Asiatic Society is going to organise a two-day National Seminar on Prakrit and Jainism to foster the subject anew, particularly in this part of the country.
The present volume contains fifteen articles of illustrious predecessors of the subject published in different books and papers. As the title suggests, this volume tends to cover many aspects of Jainistic and Prakrit studies. I congratulate the editor of this volume for the pains he has undertaken for bringing it out. I hope it will be useful for those who take interest in the subject.
1 March 2005
Dilip Coomer Ghose
General Secretary The Asiatic Society