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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
Coming to comparatively modern times, Oriental or Indological studies by Western scholars commenced about the beginning of the last quarter of the 18th century. The credit goes to Sir William Jones, Judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, who took the initiative, poineered the studies and founded the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 A.D. To the early orientalists, Islam was no stranger and they knew much more about Buddhism, which was the prevailing religion of the greater part of Asia, than about any other Indian religion. It was, therefore, Brāhmanism or Hinduism which engaged their attention first, and they came to be seriously interested in Jainism quite late in the day.
However, the fact of Jainism cannot have been unknown even to the earliest European students of Sanskrit and Indology; indeed, it was more than once mentioned by Sir William Jones himself. The first regular notice of the Jainas appears to be the one published by Lieut. Wilfred in the Asiatic Researches in 1799 and the contemporary existence of monuments, literature and adherents of Jainism was first brought to light by Col. Colin Mackenzie and Dr. F. Buchanan Hamilton in 1807, followed by H.T. Colebrooke's Observations on the Jains. This the most eminent Sanskritist of his times, whose personal collections of Sanskrit manuscripts included a fair number of Jaina texts, gave a more or less accurate account of this religion together with a hint that it must be older than Buddhism.
As time went, the Jaina system of religion and culture came to be studied more intensively as well as extensively, and its literature, art and architecture, archaeological remains, tenets, practice, history and traditions became subjects of specialised studies. A host of savants worked in the field, most notable among them being Albrecht Weber, Leumann, Rice, Fleet, Guerinot, Wilson, Jacobi, Buhler, Hoernle, Hertel, Burgess, Jarl Charpentier, Vincent Smith, F.W. Thomas, Schubring and Zimmer.
