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rapidity, as the work requires more time and large amount of funds. But it gives us immense pleasure to bring to your kind notice that two research scholars have been working here for their PH.D., one on the Cultural History of Moodbidri and the other on the Jaina Mathematics--to whom bare necessities like borading and lodging have been provided by the Jain Math. They have reported us that they have here large number of manuscripts for consultation which form the source material for writing their theses and that the material available here have been highly useful, easily accessible and really valuable.
Formerly these manuscript volumes were stored in a disordered way in a temple near the Digambara Jain Math. Sorry were people to see the condition of these valuable works of old, which were about 4,000 in number. Fortunately for us, all these volumes were discovered and brought to the knowledge of the people of Moodbidri by Shri Devakumarji Jain of Arrah (Bihar state) who also arranged for keeping them safely in the first floor of Jaina Dharmashala of Moodbidri. Thanks to Shri Devakumarji, but for whose personal interest all the volumes would have been lost.
When Late Smt. Ramarani Jain, the wife of Late Shri Shanti prasad Jain took the Pioneering interest in providing research facilities in Karnataka to the promising youngsters for bringing to light the hitherto unknown facts of history, then the Srimati Ramarani Jaina Shodha Samsthana at Moodbidri came into existance and Sri Charukeerti Bhattaraka Swami of Moodbidri donated all the manuscript volumes he possessed to the research Institute, Thus, one has to be proud of the services of Smt. Ramarani Jaina who spent more than four Lakhs of Rupees for the construction of the building and also to be proud of the donation of Shri Digambara Jain Math which parted with four thousand manuscript volumes which were its own. The result is the formation of the manuscript library under the care, control and benefaction of the Dig. Jain Math which has been attracting research scholars and thus fostering the progress of research work.
The manuscript library in Smt. Ramarani Jaina Shodha Samsthana has an enormous treasure of Knowledge, dealing with almost all branches of human wisdom of old, along with the literary works like Kavyas, puranas, poetry, commentaries, works on history, tradition, social practices, philosopy etc. The special importance of this particular library is that it contains the copies of the original works of different authors of modbidri and the neighbouring areas, the works which have been neither published so far nor even known to others. When Sri R. Narasimhachar undertook the work of reading all the unpublished manuscript volumes in the whole of Karnataka in the beginning of this century and also brought to light more than 1145 unknown authors of Karnataka it appears that he did not get a chance to go through these manuscripts just because the presence of all these volumes was not known to outsiders at that time.
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