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Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
finishing a single one, would bore and disappoint you. One at a time, and that too to be fruitfully completed within a fairly right time, should be the guiding self-disciplinary principle kept before you throughout your career. And lastly may you be tempted by quality rather than quantity in your persuits of higher studies and researcn, always aiming at a genuine problem - be it or be it a research paper or a doctoral dissertation.
Let me illustrate the lack of some of these basic ideals as reflected in my own observations and experiences. On the occasion of the Ujjain Session of the A.I.O.C.(1972), on the last day, we had invited Prof.Alsdorf to our Prakrit and Jainism Section; and in his informal address he passingly remarked that out of about thirty papers presented thereat, only three or four had problems for them ei., most of the papers were descriptive and had no true research stuff. This fact was again brought out by Prof.D.D.Malvania on a similar occasion at the Dharwad Session (1976) of the same Conference. And I have observed that more or less the same conditions prevail even today. So I modestly appeal, to take a serious note of this and nip off this trend, if existing in whosoever's case, in its bud only. Then, peeping a little at the recent zone of Ph.D.Studies, we find that prototypical trends and approaches rather dishearten us though the number of subjects or topics covered is gratifying. If we pass our eyes over the informative list of Ph.D.dissertations (written or being written) in our contextual range of the Jaina Purānas itself (Higher Education and Research in Prakrit and Jainology, Sankaya Partikā I, Śramanavidyā, Vol.l, Varanasi 1983), we find that several siudies of the individual (Laghu) Purānas prototypically rotate over the Tulasi Rāmāyana for comparision. What I mean by bringing out such feature at this context, is that in this very range, fresh tracts or aspects could have been certainly explored for worthy harvest. Finally I hope, you will take these words, some of them signifying bitter truth, as coming from the heart of an elder colleague and not from the mouth of a pretending cynic.
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