Book Title: Sramana 2000 01
Author(s): Shivprasad
Publisher: Parshvanath Vidhyashram Varanasi

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Page 223
________________ २१४ when quite young, experienced a profound attraction towards Jainism and lived to the end of his life in India. Charlotte Krause on her part went even further. She took Indian nationality, converted to Jainism and was known for some time under the name of Subhadra Devi. These facts explain the attribute "German Jain Śrāvikā", applied to her. At a later period in her life, and for reasons not made clear here but which can be read between the lines, there came a certain disenchantment towards Jainism. In her sixties, Charlotte Krause re-entered the Catholic Church and shut herself up in Gwalior where she lived and where her tomb (photo in the frontispiece) is to be found. In his foreword, Mr. S.R. Sarma, specialist in history of science and retired professor of Aligarh Muslim University, a large part of whose studies were done in Marburg, narrates briefly the role of German scholarship in the development of Indology and lists a number of German specialists in Jaina studies (Strangely, for the present period, the name of Mme. A Mette is missing). The main part of the book is a re-arrangement of the minor writings of Charlotte Krause, distributed in three sections according to the language in which they were written for she spoke, besides English, fluently Hindi and Gujarati (English ten articles, pp. 3-226; Hindi, 2 articles, pp. 229-272; six articles, pp. 275-310). The fourth section of the book contains the most well known major works of the author and this is a welcome initiative: Ancient Jaina Hymns (published in Gwalior in 1952 but difficult to find now) which bring together the original texts of eight hymns, annotated and provided with commentaries. It is an useful collection and it is one of the few systematic works available until now in the immense field of Stotra and other Jaina Stutis, still too little studied. With regard to the annotated edition with grammar and glossary of the Nasaketari Katha (Leipzig 1925; here pp. 465-595) which was originally the doctoral thesis of the author, it is hardly necessary to stress its importance for the knowledge of New Indo-Aryan languages of western India, on which they throw an extremely valuable light. If it contained only these two monographs, the present volume would already have been indispensable. But it allows, on the other hand, the reader to discover thousands of little known facets of the history and literature of the Jainas, all through the articles, apparently more anecdotal Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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