________________
192
NARAYAN M. KANSARA
SAMBODHI
considered to be their authors. All Agamas other than the twelve Angas in the class are included in the class called angabhāhya. But we have no source or means at our disposal to work out the chronological order in which the new additions were made in the class called angabāhya. Muni Jambuvijaya tries to construct a picture of a chronological order by joining together stray links of history. On the evidence of Vācaka Umāsvāti, the author of the Tattvārthādhigama-sūtra and on that of the Dhavala-tikā on it, he finds that eighteen works listed by him were well known as angabāhya works in those days. The Nandisutra mentions sixty angabhāhya works which were other than the avasyakas. At present many of them are extinct. The list of the established classed of the śruta, which is universally recognised by the Svetambaras with some minor changes includes, 11 Angas, 12 Upāngas, 6 Chedasūtras, 4 Mülasūtras, 10 Prakırnakas, and 2 Cūlikāsutras. The Jaina Āganas are a living literature. They have been edited and published by a number of religious personalities. Modern scholars have not evinced as much interest in the study of the Jaina Agamas as they have in the study of its Vedic and Buddhist counterparts. Indeed the critical edition of all the Agamas was a long felt need. Since 1848 attempts were made for the publication of the Jaina Ägamas, as for instance by Stevenson, Weber, Ray Ray Dhanaptsimhaji, Hermann Jacobi, Leumann, Steinthal, Hoernel, Schubring, Sägaranandasuri. As a result of the efforts of Muni Shri Punyavijayaji for about forty years, a committee was formed in the year 1964 by the Shri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya (Govalia Tank Road, Bombay 16) to publish a critical edition of the Jaina Agamas. The scheme was adopted to edit all the Jaina Āganias critically and to publish them in 17 Volumes. It was decided to accept the following six principles in critically editing the texts of the Jaina Agamas : (1) utilization of the old handwritten manuscripts, (ii) of the Cūrnī, Tīkā, Avacūri, Tippanaka, etc., (iii) and of the quotations from the Agama texts; (iv) comparision with the Sūtras readings found in other Āgama texts; (v) discrimination of the unwanted and wrong amendations made by scholars; and (vi) of the mistakes committed by copyists. So far Volumes I, II, III, IV, V, IX, XV, and XVII have already been published, and Volume VII is under progress. In his article on Jainology in Western Publications I, Klaus Bruhn focuses attention on the less known development in Jaina literature : the exegetical works connected with the Śvetämbara canon - Niryuktis, Bhāşyas, Cūrnis, Tikās. The main problem of Jaina philosophy as the basis of Jainology is neither the preparation of "better" editions nor the edition of new manuscripts; what is first necessary is the philological study of the inimense mass of edited texts. This is very difficult. Studies of complete works are conspicuous by their absence and even those portions selected for study are often comparatively small. One intention of this paper is to offer a few suggestions for a biblography of text editions and to describe furthermore what we could call a systematic preparation of conspectuses, to greatly facilitate the work of further generations.
