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Tessitori's Pioneering Work on the Uvaeśamālā
2. Some loose pages with explanatory notes, which do not seem to be complete;
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3. The Italian translation, very neatly typed by the care of Dr. Peano.
No need to say: even a quick look at this translation is sufficient to get an idea of its high value. Moreover, till now, knowledge about the Uvaesamālā has remained confined to the scholars able to read the original Prakrit or one of the Indian languages (Hindi or Gujarati for instance) in which this text has been rendered. Except for the 29 verses translated by me into French (referred to in the beginning), and an unpublished German translation by the scholar Ernst Leumann (1859-1931) of another group of thirty verses, no translation of this text has sofar been published in any European language. Thus, if I may, I strongly wish that the scientific board of the "Societa Indologica Luigi Pio Tessitori" consider as one of its priorities the publication of this Italian translation, together with an introduction which would give an assessment of Tessitori's work and a critical bibliography of the work done since his editio princeps. This paper hopes to be a step in this direction.
The Uvaesamālā belongs to a special category of Jaina literary works which I will now try to describe. The name itself, which literally means "garland of teachings ("Ghirlanda d'insegnamenti", is not true title, insofar as it is rather a generic designation than the designation of an individual work. Anyone consulting the catalogues of Jaina manuscripts would be able to realize that there are many works bearing this name or a very similar one. Such works generally obey the following formal principles of composition: they are written in verses, a device which in India is always resorted to if there is a desire to emphasize that the texts are meant for being committed to memory. This is obviously the case in books meant to impart a teaching, whether religious or secular. The verses generally follow each other without being separated in different sections. Thus, the main question they
