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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
works in ancient and modern languages is the use in new publications of the canonical Ardhamagadhi and in the commentarial Jaina Maharashtri Prakrita. I have met monks whose fluency with Jaina Maharashtri is such they can speak extemporaneously in it when addressing public meetings. And there are some monks who can write freely in it and compose verses in it, using the traditional metre specially the Arya. Such a product is Muni Chandanmal's 'Rayana välakahä'. From one point of view this work is a tour de force, an astonishing achievement, but it is also more than that. It is a work of devotion,a product of religious devotion, meant by the author to promulgate Eternal Truth, as the Jain faith conceives it, and by presenting those teachings in narrative form to make them more comprehensible to the world to stimulate zeal in spreading them. Whatever one's personal doctrines about cosmic order and religious belief, one must regard such a motive as a noble one, which should be listened to attentively, and a work so motivated must be respected.
W Norman Brown
President, American Institute of Indian Studies Professor Emeritus of Sanskrit, Pennsylvania University
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