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INTRODUCTION
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presented peculier difficulties owing to the variety of languages and scripts in which it was preserved. The contents of Jaina works had their technicalities which demanded patient study There have been very few scholars who could claim first-hand acquaintance with the entire range of Jaina literature. Thus sufficient researches, with proper perspective, have not been carried in Jaina literature, so that proper place might be assigned to Jaina works in the scheme of Indian literature After extensive researches are carried on, the future historians of Indian literature will have to take their results into account, if they want to make their treatises thorough and authoritative
The first requisite of literary research is to bring out critical editions of various works, based on a sufficient number of Mss. plenty of which are available in different scripts and from various localities. Many Jaina texts are printed quite neatly, they supply the needs of a pious reader who is concerned more with contents, and that too in a spirit of devotion and faith, than with any thing else, but for the purpose of scientific studies they are as good as printed Mss, perhaps less authentic than a good Ms Critical editions, if not already accompanied by, must be followed by critical studies of Individual works discussing their textual problems, language and contents and topics arising from them, authorship, date, their indebtedness to earlier works, their influence on subsequent literature, higher values represented by them, etc The aspects of study depend on the nature of individual works When such monographs are written with critical thoroughness and scientific precision the task of the historian becomes easy when he begins to take a survey of literature. Such monographic studies are a stepping stone to higher criticism in literature So far as Jaina literature is concerned, there is an immense scope and fruitful field for critical editions and studies, but it is a deplorable fact that there is a paucity of earnest, trained workers of scholarly outlook, mainly devoted to Jains literature
Excepting a few cases, the research that has been carried on, in Jaina literature is sporadic, and the results mostly accidental If accident is to be eliminated, or at least the degree of it to be lowered, the research scholar must have a full control over the known material with which he has to deal In order to exercise this control, various facilities and instruments of research must be at his beck and call An upto-date library of published works and journals is a need the value of which cannot be exaggerated. Among the important instruments may be included Descriptive Catalogues of Mss, Bibliographies of various types, Indices of verses, words and proper names etc. by themselves they may appear quite prosaic, but without their aid no research can progress
Every historian of literature must have a clear conception of the relative chronology of the literature which he is handling Wrong chronology leads to perverted results Relative chronology can be ascrteained from various facts references to earlier and by later authors and works, refutations of earlier views of established authorship, the nature of language and contents, quotations from earlier works, etc. It is customary with our authors that they often quote verses of earlier authors either to confirm their own.[views or to refute those of others At times the names of authors and works.too are mentioned If such quotations are genuine and their sources can be traced
