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1933 (original German was in 1920). The second part of the second volume contains the history of Jain literature. Winternitz devoted nearly 175 pages to Jain literature. Between 1865 and 1920 lots of Jain texts were published. Though Winternitz did not do full justice to Jain literature, he, at least, systematised the chronology of Jain literature, apart from the Jaina agama texts. In 1941 H.R. Kapadia wrote his History of the Canonical Literature of the Jainas. Like Weber his book also contains critical assessment and the evaluation of the Jaina āgama texts. In fact, these three books were the pioneers in the field of the history of Jain literature. In the post-independence India we have some authors like Jagadish Chandra Jain, Nemichand Jain, Kailash Chandra Shastri and others who wrote the history of Jain literature in Hindi. However, many scholars think that the history of Jain literature is not yet properly written in a sense that it should maintain the chronology of the contributions of the Jains to the history of their culture. Though it is a huge task to write such a history, this Sacred Literature of the Jains will help the scholars write a book in future.
The purpose of reprinting Weber's Sacred Literature of the Jains is to get the scholars acquainted with his contribution and to understand the value and method of assessing the Jaina agama texts in a critical way. I believe that the students who are studying Jainism will be much benefited by reading this book.
In this edition some new innovations have been followed. The diacritical marks used by Weber was old-fashioned, e.g.s was written with sh, so also c, ch with ch, chh respectively. Similarly ș was written with ri and e, o with long ē and ō and so on. These were changed in accordance with the modern system of diacritical marks, otherwise all the other diacritical marks are kept as they are in the original book. A bibliography of the books referred to by Weber could not be prepared owing to the fact that in most of the cases they were in abbreviated form. To prepare a subject index is a difficult task and requires lots of time and energy, and therefore could not be done. If this book is wellreceived by the scholars, all the shortcomings would be rectified in the next edition. The contents of the book are a little elaborate and the main points are generally focused in the contents. I hope the contents will be helpful to the readers.
Finally, I should say that if this book proves useful to scholars, I shall consider my plan of reprinting Weber's book is well-executed, and this will be the reward of our labour, and the wish of the publisher will also be fulfilled. I can only say karmanevādhikāro me.
1st July 1999 Calcutta.
Satya Ranjan Banerjee
