World Jain Conference 1995 6th Conference

Author(s): Satish Jain
Publisher: Ahimsa International

Page 91

Where were those Jains of 1960s- 1990s? Whence and why did they come? What did the principles of religion teach them? A lot of unanswerable questions arise now, and if it is not addressed properly, the Jain diaspora in the west will mainifest itself in an unstructured and highly ambiguous condition.
The four teachings which the Jains have unflinchingly witnessed: co-dependence as part of an organically interrelated universe, positive non-violence in all its aspects, the realization that there are various paths to the Truth and the importance of the feminine. The educational task and maintaining of it through these four Jaina covevant will indeed insure strength to the organizational structure and to the Jaina diaspora in the West. END NOTES 1. Surendra Singhvi and S.A. Bhuvanendra Kumar, ‘Travels of Jaina Monks to the West: Early Accounts
and the Present' in Jinamanjari, Vol.2, No.2, April 1991, pp. 88-95 and concluded at 66 and 76, is an outstanding example of the kind of research and writing we so badly needed. This article also indicates that excellent work is also being done at Leicester and London. R.C. Majumdar, The Classical Accounts of India, Calcutta: Mukhopadhya, 1960 brings together translations mostly published between 1877 and 1901 and 1901 in J.W. McCrindle's five books relevant to India during Ancient Greek, Hellenistic and Byzantine times. Most western scholars working on Prakrit and Sanskrit texts would read it in the original Greek in Megastheni Indica, fragments assembled with a Latin commentary by E.A. Schwanbeck and published at Bonn in 1846 (republished Hakkert, Amsterdam, 1966). Singhvi and Kumar, op.cit., p.91. These remarks are based on years of browsing in these accounts as made available in English in the Hakluyt Travellers' Series published in London in the 1890s, but the older texts used by this series were available in a good few European and New England libraries and would be known to scholars as older English translations, and to those who could add Portuguese and Dutch to their repertory of read languages. The quotations are culled from James Bird, Historical Researches, pp.27,23 and 21. Page XIV of the
translator's Preface in J.Stevenson's Kalpa Sutra. 5. The Kalpa Sutra and Nava Tatva (trans. magadhi), J.Stevenson, London 1848. Reissued Bharat
Bharati, Varanasi (1972). The remark on availablity is based on a visit to the Day Library of Missions at Yale and a quick check of a mission related summary at Boston. Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1919. Muni Atmaramji: The Chicago-Prashnottar for the Parliament of Religions, trans. Atmanand Jain. Agra: Pustak Pracharak Mandal; 1918. The Hindi first edition appeared in 1905. The Muni was a Sadhu of the Svetambara group, born near Ferozepore in Punjab. He was a follower of Sthanakvasi teaching for some years but gave it up. His burial place is at Gujranwala now in Pakistan in old
Punjab which was the main teaching centre in his last years. 8. Arena was edited by B.O. Flower and published at Boston. It appeared in Vol.IX, 1895, pp. 157-166. 9. See Herbert Warren, "Jainism in Western Garb as a Solution to Life's Great Problems," London,
1912. Warren is given the title 'Hon. Secretary, Jaina Literature Society, London. It is known that this
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