Prolegomena to Prakritica et Jainica

Author(s): Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Asiatic Society

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PROLEGOMENA TO PRAKRITICA et JAINICA
and one more by Buchanan (=F. Buchanan Hamilton), both with the title “On the Srawacs or Jains" and followed by a few remarks of the latter and of W. Ffrancklin about some Jain temples, by Colebrooke's account of two inscriptions, and by Wilson's own review of Colebrooke's study “Sect of Jina" in his "Essays on the Philosophy of the Hindus”3. In the same year, 1827, Francklin's “Researches on the Tenets of the Jeynes and Boodhists" were published, the first book that had the Jains in its title. Its descriptive portions are readable even now, whereas this cannot be said of its mythological and speculative deductions.
We abstain from cataloguing here which was printed after 1827, since this can be found in Guérinot's Bibliography (s.b.). We must confine ourselves to mention that "Sketch" of Wilson, because it represents the most important treatment of the subject at that time. He gives a report on the numerable Jain manuscripts both privately owned by him and by the Calcutta Sanskrit College. His “Descriptive Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection”4 dealt
3. We should not like to pass over in silence the earliest
references to the Jains. Comp. Windisch in his Geschichte der indo-arischen Philologie etc., p. 29; Zachariae Wzkm 24, 337-344 (reprinted in his Kleine Schriften, p. 41-47) and Festschrift Winternitz p. 174-185; Randle Jras 1933, p. 147. The Greek glossator Hesychios (5th century A.D.) mentions 'gennoi'as naked philosophers, a word in which M. Schmidt in his 2nd ed. (1867) of Hes. p. 342 surmises the Jains, comp. Gray and Schuyler, Am. J. of Philol. 22 (1901), p. 197. Lassen, Ind. Altertumskunde 4 (1861) and Lüders Kz 38, p. 433 are not against Schmidt's suggestion, whereas Stein in Megasthenes and Kautilya, p. 293 f.
maintains a cautions attitude. 4. The Mackenzie Collection. A descriptive
Catalogue...By...H.H. Wilson. C. 1828, 2nd ed. Madras 1882.