________________
Tessitori's Pioneering Work on the Uvaeśamālā
the Jaina community, and one adaptation in old Gujarati. The important point is that this collection is grouped around one stanza of the Uvaesamālā, which says:
: 85
"Lodging, bed, seat, food, drink, medicine, clothes, almsbowl: even if one's own wealth is limited in quantity, one should take from it, however little it may be, to offer it (to the Jaina monk)."
Through the list of eight objects to be given in charity, this stanza provides the starting point for eight stories. Moreover, the first word of the verse (in Prakrit vasahīsayaṇāsaṇa) are in fact the true title of the collection and give it its specificity: there are, among the Jains, many collections which bear the title "Stories about charity" (dānakathā), but there is only one which is connected with this particular verse. Such were the circumstances which led me to take as a companion a particular work of L.P. Tessitori: the edition of the Uvaesamālā which was published as early as 1912 in the Giornale della Societa Asiatica Italiana and which I took as a basis for the French translation of twenty-nine verses I gave as an appendix to the study of the story-collection mentioned above. Although a brief analysis of Tessitori's work on this text has already been given by Prof. Carlo Della Casa in his contribution "Gli studi jainici di Luigi Pio Tessitori" published in the Proceedings of the International Conference organized in Udine in 19872, I would like to come back again to this topic with the aim to stress the importance of Tessitori's work both as a masterpiece of scholarship and as an evidence of his intuition and originality: the very fact that he selected the Uvaesemālā speaks in favour of a high clear-sightedness because it is a basic book of Jaina teachings which holds an essential place in Jaina literature and in the heart of Śvetāmbara Jains. This is first proved by what could appear as a detail: the traditional ascription of the Uvaesamālā to a very early date and the idea that its author, the monk Dharmadāsa, was a contemporary of Mahāvīra. The critical discussion of this question occupies an important part of Tessitori's
