Vijaydharmasuri

Author(s): A J Sunavala
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Page 67

WESTERN SCHOLARS 61 become possible to publish Jain texts. If he had not supplied me with manuscripts of the Hefte and the समराइचकहा, I should never have been able to undertake the edition of these important texts.'
DR. TESSITORI VISITS THE MONK IN HIS SUR
ROUNDINGS A few days after the Conference Vijaya Dharma Sūri left Jodhpur to resume his peregrinations, and, passing through several villages and towns, reached Shivganj, before he rainy season of the same year, 1914. Here came the learned Italian scholar, the late Dr. L. Tessitori, to pay his respects to the Jain Āchārya. The great simplicity of the Monk, his absolute renunciation and detachment from worldly objects, his learning and eloquence, his scholarship and piety made a deep impression upon the mind of the great Italian scholar, so much so that he was tempted to give a vivid description of his visit to the Jain Monk, in a treatise entitled 'A Jain Achārya of the Present Day', wherein he has embodied his views of what he saw and thought of that great Āchārya. Though Vijaya Dharma Sūri', writes Dr. Tessitori, is very well known to all Orientalists in Europe whose sphere of work is directly or indirectly associated with Jainism--and he reckons amongst his friends Dr. F. W. Thomas, Prof. H. Jacobi, Dr. J. Hertel, Dr. A. Guérinot, &c.---yet I am so far the only European who has had opportunities to know him intimately in his own surroundings. I have visited