Vijaydharmasuri

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

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THE JAIN ACHARYA AND
him four times during the last three years, and every time his extraordinary personality has aroused in me more interest and admiration. I have known him as a scholar, I have known him as an orator, I have known him as a monk; and, though he is not permitted to yield to feelings of worldly affection, I think I can say that I have also known him as a friend. In the cells of the Upāshrayas I have sat by his side listening to his explanations of philological or philosophical difficulties which had been puzzling me; in the open halls of the Dharmashālās I have listened to his sermons delivered in Hindi or in Gujarati before a motionless and ecstatic audience, and have admired his simple and yet subtle and forcible eloquence; in the temples I have been taken by him right before the marble idols and have read with him the Sanskrit inscriptions engraved on their basements. It is to him that I am indebted for having had an insight into the monastic life of the Jains which probably no European ever had before. At Shivganj I have seen him pull out the hair of his chief disciple, Indra Vijaya Upādhyāya; in Udaipur I have seen him consecrate two new monks; in the Dharmashālā of Ranakpur, where the evening dusk was fantastically lit up by fires blazing in the courtyard, I have watched him performing the Pratikramana with his monks; in the stony forests of the Aravalli I have accompanied him in his Vihāras, walking by his side in the middle of the cluster of his white-clad disciples; in Kathiawar I have entered with him the village of Talaja amongst