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Śramana, Vol. 61, No. 3
July - September 10
TESSITORI'S PIONEERING WORK ON THE UVAEŠAMĀLĀ (UPADEŠAMĀLĀ) A SRAMAŅA BASIC BOOK OF JAINA
TEACHINGS
Nalini Balbir*
[ Composed by Dharmadāsagani, Uvaesamālā (Skt. Upadeśamālā) is very famous treatise which deals with teachings on various aspects of Jainism. Uvaesamālā literally means "garland of teachings". Containing 540 verses, it is a basic book on Jaina teachings which holds an essential place in Jaina literature particularly in Svetāmbara Jains. The author of the article has critically examined and compared with all other available manuscripts and commentaries on the said work with his well-received conclusions based on phonological and morphological studies. ]
By chance, it happens that Tessitori is probably the Italian scholar with whom I feel most deeply connected, because he is, as far as I remember, one of those I had to read first as a Ph.D. student in Indology. This was due to the following circumstances: for my Ph.D., I was given the task of critically editing, translating and studying an unpublished Jaina Sanskrit work containing eight stories extolling the virtues of charity towards the Jaina monk (dāna), one manuscript of which is part of the rich collection kept in Strasbourg. It later turned out that this collection of narratives was certainly quite popular in Western India in the 14th century onward, as was proved, on the one hand, by the fairly numerous manuscripts discovered in the libraries of Gujarat, and, on the other hand, by the fact that this anonymous collection was the basis for two remakes in Sanskrit due to the pen of well-known monks of * Paper presented to "Tessitori el India, Seminar at Udine (Italy) on
10th September, 1994 on the occasion of Tessitori's Day.
