Dr. Ulrich Timme Kragh
International Journal of Jaina Studies
(Online) Vol. 9, No. 3 (2013) 1-53
Abstract
The article critically discusses the underlying principles for the writing of literary history. It rejects a universalized model and proposes a new approach of "localized literary history" that is theoretically rooted in metahistorical concepts of "textory" and "sub-text". The method takes its starting point in local text-collections rather than national literature. With the Jain Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍhār repository in Jaipur as a point of departure, it is demonstrated how a study of a local manuscript collection reveals a literary history, which cannot be encountered by the universalized approach.
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Ulrich Timme Kragh
The writing of this article was made possible by a research fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands in the period July 2012 to February 2013. The author wishes to thank Director Philippe M.F. Peycam, Institute Manager Willem Vogelsang, Fellowship Coordinator Sandra van der Horst, and other members of the Institute for their most kind, warm, and very supportive hospitality. Research on the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār library at the Apabhraṃśa Sāhitya Academy in Jaipur in the period March-May 2011 was made possible by a stipend from the Faculty of Humanities at Copenhagen University (Rejsestipendium for humanistiske studerende). For kind hospitality and informative research support in Jaipur, the author wishes to thank Kamal Chand Sogani, Shakuntala Jain, Shugan Chand Jain, Shivani Bothra, Vipin Kumar Baj, as well as all the staff at the Apabhraṃśa Sāhitya Academy. The author also wishes to give thanks to John Cort at Denison University for reading a draft of this article and providing critical feedback and to Peter Flügel of SOAS for including my humble article in the IJJS journal and for his excellent editorship. The paper is dedicated to the late Shri Gyan Chand Khinduka (1923-2011), member of the Digambar Jain Atiśaya Kṣetra Śrī Mahāvīr-jī Trust, at whose initiative the Apabhraṃśa Sāhitya Academy was founded at the Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān in Jaipur in 1988.
Localized Literary History: Sub-Text And Cultural Heritage In The Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār, A Digambara Manuscript Repository In Jaipur
When historical writing is fixated on preconceived ideas, the complexity of the past is ignored in favor of arriving at neat and comprehensive historical narratives of the preselected concept. Such fixation has hitherto dominated all literary historiography, which has resulted in what may best be characterized as abstract, ahistorical accounts. For Jainism, the existing literary histories have historicized contemporary prefigured notions of Jain authors and their writings in a universalized manner that does not reflect the reality of existing archives of Jain texts. Resisting these tendencies, the present essay criticizes the standard approach to the writing of literary history and instead lays out an alternative method that takes its starting point not in abstract 'literature' but in concrete 'sub-texts' in the form of physical 'manuscripts' or 'books'.
With the flourit of Renaissance humanism in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries, the old medieval European notion of book-learning called 'book-craft' (Old English boccræft) was superseded by the abstract humanist idea of 'literature'. The shift triggered an intellectual quantum leap in Europe away from physical 'books' over to disembodied 'texts', from 'knowledge' over to 'reading' and 'interpretation'. In India, a similar leap occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries departing from the old Sanskrit notions of grantha ('book'), śāstra ('science'), and vidyā ('knowledge'), arriving instead at the modern Hindi concepts of pāṭh ('text') and vyākhyā ('interpretation'). With it, 'literature' and the accompanying 'literary history' became cardinal conceptions, which stand at the most complex epistemological interface of the concrete and the abstract, the specific and the universal. Consequently, they are terms that demand great vigilance in their application in learned pursuits.
Critical reflection on the scholarly usage of the term 'literature' (sāhitya) has only just begun to be voiced in the study of Indian cultural heritage, but not yet in the study of Jain heritage. In the case of Jainism, there are, on the one hand, already numerous religious histories that quite uncritically employ 'literature' as their key concept for crafting universalized historical narratives of the abstraction (sāmānya) of Jain 'literature', e.g., the extensive seven-volume history of Jain literature (Jain Sāhitya kā Bṛhad Itihās) edited by Mālvaṇiyā and Mehtā (1989-1998). On the other hand, there exist surveys of manuscript collections, such as the catalog publications by Kāslīvāl (1949, 1954, etc.) or Jambūvijay (2000), which register the specificities (viśeṣa) of concrete archives of Jain books (grantha) without raising these physical documents to a higher narrative level of 'literature'. Scholarly attention has also been given to the historical nature and sociological status of Jain manuscript libraries (jñān bhaṇḍār or śāstrabhaṇḍār) (Cort 1995a) and to the nineteenthcentury cultural encounter between orientalist scholars searching for manuscript sources and the local owners and caretakers of Jain temple libraries (Flügel 1999). However, the conceptual leaps from 'book' (grantha) to 'text' (pāṭh) and further from 'text' (pāṭh) to 'literature' (sāhitya) seem as of yet to have remained unscrutinized in the study of Jainism.
The broader field of South Asian studies has though in recent years witnessed increased attention to theoretical questions regarding 'book', 'text', 'literature', and 'literary history'. The two edited volumes Écrire et transmettre en Inde classique by Colas and Gerschheimer (2009) and Aspects of Manuscript Culture in South India by Rath (2012) opened theoretical discussion on the concrete level (viśeṣa) of what constitutes a 'manuscript' and a 'text' in the contexts of classical Indian scribal practices and transmissions. Conversely, the two edited volumes Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia by Pollock (2003) and Literature and Nationalist Ideology: Writing Histories of Modern Indian Languages by Harder (2011) pursued historical and sociological inquiries on the abstract level (sāmānya) of 'literature' within Indian literary historiography. What still seems to be missing from these deliberations is critical reflection on what it is that forms the semiotic link between the concrete 'book' or 'manuscript' and the abstract 'text' or 'literature', and concerning how conceptual recalibration of this linkage would allow for alternative modes of crafting literary histories.
The article at hand invites the reader to think further about the relationship between 'manuscript' and 'literature' in the prevailing European and Indian contexts of 'literary history' as well as more specifically in terms of the vicissitudes of Jain texts. In the wider humanist fields of literary criticism and comparative literature, the essentialist agendas that seem fundamentally to govern the very project of writing literary histories have been probed and questioned in the edited volume Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory by Hutcheon and Valdés (2002). Building on the insights furnished thereby, yet taking additional steps, the reader is presently asked to abandon or transcend the traditional universalist sense and grand scope of the 'literary history' approach and instead to try out a new departure of literary microhistory.
The article commences in Part I with a general and theoretical discussion of 'literary history' as a particular genre of academic writing applied to European as well as Indian literatures. It will be argued that the standard literary histories whether of European, Indian, or Jain literature traditionally are based on a universal concept of 'literature'. In view of this, regular literary histories are compared to the grand narratives employed in the genre of 'universal history', which were popular in European history writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In contrast thereto, a new method, referred to as 'localized literary history', shall be proposed, which originates not with abstract epi-textual and hyper-textual concepts of 'texts' and 'literature' but with concrete sub-textual notions of 'manuscripts' and 'libraries' that are historically situated within local communities of text users.
In Part II, the essay turns to a specific case study of a Jain Digambara manuscript library in Jaipur, namely the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār repository housed at the Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān institute. Having introduced the library and its history in the broader setting of Jain manuscript collections in Jaipur, a brief survey will be given of the library's textual holdings in the genres of stories (purāṇa, carita, and kathā), doctrinal works (dharma, darśana, and ācāra), and epistemology (nyāyaśāstra and tarka). These genres cover about fifty percent of the entire collection of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār.
Finally, based on the findings of the case study, Part III of the paper will assess what may be gained by employing the method of localized literary history as opposed to relying on the standard 'universalist' style of literary historiography. The evaluation will address four issues of (1) the scope of textual materials to be included in literary histories, (2) differences in providing information on textual representation and manuscript distribution, (3) linguistic delimitations applied to literary historiography, and (4) the ways in which universalist and localized literary histories differ in respectively constructing senses of national or local cultural heritage.
PART I: THE PROBLEM OF THE UNIVERSALIST LITERARY HISTORY
Literary History as Universal History
It is surprisingly difficult to find a history of literary history itself, and it seems that the fundamental premise for creating literary histories has as of yet neither been fully defined nor critically assessed. It would be the task of a history of literary history to uncover literary history's underlying aims and principles, as well as its intended and unintended historical effects. Admittedly, this involves a larger intellectual project and the present article will therefore only attempt to contribute to this end in a minuscule way by addressing one of the dominant principles that govern literary history, namely the view of literature as being 'writing of excellence'.[1]
Right from the inception of the genre, literary history[2] - here discussed in general terms - has been tied up in a political agenda of gathering and controlling textual production, which on a deeper level has rested upon a 'universal' conception of literature. When searching for the beginning of literary history, the case of Henry the VIII's commission to John Leland in 1533 stands out as an archetype for such interplay between politics and text. In connection with the English Crown's break with the Vatican as a consequence of the Protestant Reformation, Leland was assigned the duty of investigating the literary stock of the kingdom as part of a series of measures aimed at nationalizing the property of English religious houses (Simpson 2002: 8-33). By subsuming disparate authorships and texts under a general notion of shared heritage, Leland's book-lists along with his encyclopedic survey of 593 erudite persons and authors in De uiris illustribus (Carley 2010) composed in the years 1535-1545 not only charted a history of learning and texts, but also implied an intellectual identity of what it meant to be English.
Comparable to other forms of universal history, Leland's work sets out from a generality or universal (Greek tá kathalou, Latin generalitas, Sanskrit sāmānya), in this case the notions of 'erudition' first and 'literature' second, upon which it furnishes a master narrative starting from the genesis of these generalities through to their historic culmination and end. By thus viewing the topic in a Platonic sense of an ideal, the literary historian takes a top-down approach to the subject of textual production: He sets out with a preconception of what constitutes 'writing of excellence', fielded by the humanist value of illustriousness.
The underlying principle of relying on a universalist inception subsumes literary history as a subtype under universal history. A 'universal history' is, generally speaking, a historical narrative that attempts to cover its topic in its entirety from beginning to end, or as Roland Barthes (1954: 29) put it universal history is a 'synthetic history' (l'HistorieSynthèse). For example, the topic of a universal history might be the beginning of the world and human civilization as seen in such religious universal histories as the Judeo-Christian Pentateuch or the Jain epics of The Great Story (Mahāpurāṇa) or the story of The Sixty-Four Illustrious Men (Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacaritra).[3] It may also be a general history of mankind, as it, e.g., appears in the 65-volume An Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time to the Present produced in Britain by George Sale et alii in the years 1747-1768. Sale's encyclopedic work commences with the Biblical genesis to which it adds a secular history of the world radiating out from the postdiluvian Biblical countries including the Antique Greece, the Roman Empire, Asia, Africa, Europe, and America from the beginning of each civilization down to modern time.[4] Or, the topic of a universal history may consist in a more narrowly defined generality, such as 'literature', 'philosophy', or any other expression of cultural heritage.
The Rise of Universalist Literary Histories
Reliance on a universal notion of 'literature' is a key-feature of literary history that has been constant throughout the growth and proliferation of the genre. Accordingly, the first actual literary histories written in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries revolved around pivotal concepts of national 'poetry' or 'literature'. This is, for example, evident in the first English exemplars of the genre, namely Thomas Warton's three-volume work The History of English Poetry published in 1774-1781, which took its inception in the generality of 'poetry', and Robert Chambers' History of the English Language and Literature from 1837, which was based in the broader generality of 'literature'.[5] The same pattern appears in the earliest German literary histories, viz. Johan Gottfried von Herder's Über die neuere deutsche Literatur published in 1766-1767, Friedrich Schlegel's Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer from 1798, and Georg Gottfried Gervinus' Geschichte der poetischen NationalLiteratur der Deutschen brought out in 1835-1842.[6] These literary histories of the Romantic era not only aimed at exploring "the indwelling principle, essence, Geist, or idea of works, authors, genres, traditions, national cultures and humanity" (Perkins 2000: 350); they also restricted and governed the range of what constitutes literature by delimiting it within the notions of 'poetry' or 'literature' as 'writing of excellence', thereby at once rendering the topic manageable for the writing of its history, while implicitly regulating and thus sweeping aside the forms of writing that were deemed inferior and therefore below this order, making the literary historian an auditor of literature.
The Writing of the Literary Histories of India
The same universalist principle, which was employed in the writing of European literary histories, has consistently been applied in the writing of the literary histories of India. [7] Since the very beginning of Indian literary historiography in the nineteenth century, the field has branched off into two rather distinct and compartmentalized disciplines, viz. a modernist and a classicist branch, both of which have aimed at historicizing 'writing of excellence' in their respective areas.
The modernist Indian literary history is focused on literature written in the modern Indian vernaculars, such as Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, and so forth.[8] It began in earnest with the publication in 1839-1847 of Garcin de Tassy's two-volume work Histoire de la littérature hindouie et hindoustani.[9] Similar to the above-mentioned histories of English and Roman poetry by Thomas Warton (1774-1781) and Friedrich Schlegel (1798), the focus of de Tassy's bibliographical survey of Hindi and Urdu poets was belles-lettres, i.e., fine compositions of literary beauty. In the subsequent decades, the scope of the modernist literary history was expanded to cover writings in other Indian vernaculars, including among others histories of Tamil poetry by Simon Casie Chitty (1859), Bengali literature by Romesh Chunder Dutt (1877), Malayalam literature by P. Govinda Piḷḷai (1881),[10] and Marwari, Hindi, and Bihari literature by George A. Grierson (1889).[11]
What is notable is the manner in which these histories combine two universals in defining their scholarly object of inquiry. First, as literary histories, they take 'literature' as their focus in the genre-sense of poetry, drama, fiction, religious narrative, and biography.[12] Secondly, as studies of vernacular literature, their stated purpose was to concentrate on compositions written in the vernacular languages that were or had been spoken by the Indian people, as opposed to the classical literature composed in the artificial literary language of Sanskrit (de Tassy 1870 I: 1).
On the one hand, this conception of vernacularity was never allowed to reach its full universality, given that a comprehensive literary history of Indian vernacular texts, whose scope is not limited to the pre-modern and modern eras but which also includes the classical and Medieval colloquial literature composed in the old vernaculars of Pāli, Prākṛt, and Apabhraṃśa, has as of yet not been attempted. It is therefore evident that the modernist Indian literary history remains partial, as it is, in fact, not demarcated by vernacularity per se but by its preoccupation with the linguistic boundaries of contemporary Indian languages.
On the other hand, the inclusion of modern Indian literature under the universalist canopies of nation and national languages remains somewhat problematic, as is evident when considering the literatures that have fallen at the margins of these notions.[13] Two examples may be cited here. First, the classical language of Sanskrit remains an active medium of literary composition today, and though it is not a true vernacular even if some educated Indians do speak it - Sanskrit is both a modern as well as a national language. Nonetheless, contemporary Sanskrit compositions are typically not included in modernist Indian literary histories. At the other end of the spectrum lies the contested status of Indian English literature, which has led to a continued questioning of the proper place of Indian English literature in 'Indian' literary history (Paranjape 1998, Harder 2011b). Consequently, even the notions of 'modern' and 'national' entail difficulties in being applicable as characteristic features of the modernist literary history.
While the modernist history is limited to late Medieval and modern works, the opposite reservation can be observed in the classicist history of Indian literature. The classicist history concerns writings of excellence composed in the literary languages, first and foremost the classical literature in Sanskrit, and has generally restricted its scope to texts of the Indian Antique and Medieval periods.
In much the same way as John Leland began De uiris illustribus by tracing the earliest prototype of erudition in England which he saw as lying in the sagacity of pre-Christian pagan druids and bards,[14] the classicist history of Indian literature, starting with Henry Thomas Colebrooke's On the Vedas, or Sacred Writings of the Hindus published in 1805,[15] commenced with a firm focus on the pre-Hindu Vedic ṛṣis, and only gradually expanded its scope to encompass other genres and periods of Sanskrit literature. In the following decades, Simon-Alexandre Langlois (1827) wrote about selected narratives from the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, the Harivaṃśa, and the Hitopadeśa; Friedrich von Adelung (1830) provided a bibliographical study of the materials available in Western languages on Sanskrit literature; Albrecht Weber (1852), aside from describing the Vedic literature, also included the arts and sciences; and F. Max Müller (1859) gave a more thorough introduction to the Vedic literature. By the late nineteenth century, full-range histories of Indian classical literature covering all the major genres of Sanskrit composition had been published by Félix Nève (1883), Alexander Baumgartner (1897), Robert Watson Frazer (1898), and Arthur A. Macdonell (1899).
The classicist preoccupation with antiquarian writings has though tended to entail a tacit disregard of the meanings, uses, and values of classical texts in modern India, which is particularly true of early Indian literary historiography as an occidental, colonialist enterprise. The disregard in question is not merely an innocent omission of post-Medieval Sanskrit literature; rather, it assumed the form of reducing Indian cultural heritage to purely abstract and religious aspects, denying India a political history as such, and consequently negated the notion of the modern Indian nation. The said attitudes have usually been kept implicit in the writing of classicist histories, but in The History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it Illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans Max Müller (1859: 30f.) expressed this underlying view very explicitly:
"The Indian never knew the feeling of nationality, and his heart never trembled in the expectation of national applause. There were no heroes to inspire a poet, no history to call forth a historian. The only sphere where the Indian mind found itself at liberty to act, to create, and to worship, was the sphere of religion and philosophy; and nowhere have religious and metaphysical ideas struck roots so deep in the mind of a nation as in India. The Hindus were a nation of philosophers It might therefore be justly said that India has no place in the political history of the world."
Müller's statement goes to show that the classicist Indian literary history was not rooted solely in the universal of literature as 'writing of excellence'; it combined therewith a second generality of viewing India as a land of religion, completely enmeshed in a virtual reality of abstract philosophy and metaphysical beliefs while oblivious to political and technological history, and this remains a common view of India's older history and national heritage to this day.
The universal conception of Indian literature as being more religious than the literary heritage of other civilizations of the Antique and Medieval ages was initially anchored in the perception that the Brāhmaṇical tradition occupies the center stage of Indian literary heritage. As Robert Watson Frazer (1898: 68) put it in his A Literary History of India: "The succeeding history of India, as preserved in its literature, is one unending struggle of the Brāhmaṇic power to assert its supremacy, and to promulgate far and wide the ordinances it laid down to formulate under Divine sanction." This conception meant that the early histories of Indian religious literature written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stressed the oldest Brāhmaṇical writings while devoting relatively little attention to the texts of other traditions. Only gradually did Buddhist literature, the later texts of the Hindu tradition, and the works of other traditions, including Jainism, Indian Islam, and Sikhism come to be included in the classicist Indian literary histories.
The Literary Histories of Jainism
As for the literature of Jainism, which below shall be the focus in the present case study, Jain texts were first included in the broader classicist survey histories of Indian literature by Moritz Winternitz and Helmuth von Glasenapp. In 1920, Winternitz completed his threevolume work Geschichte der indischen Literatur, the second volume of which covers Buddhist and Jain texts. Winternitz' (1920: 289-356) study of Jainism was limited to the texts of the Śvetāmbara Jain canon (Siddhānta) and a few major works by later Jain authors. Two years later, in 1922, Helmuth von Glasenapp brought out a beautifully illustrated one-volume work entitled Die Literaturen Indiens von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, which introduced the whole span of Indian religious literature, including nine pages devoted to the Jain canonical scriptures and general remarks about non-canonical Jain writings. A more extensive description of Jain texts in a general work on Indian literature was offered in 1978 in the encyclopedic The Cultural Heritage of India, whose fifth volume edited by Sunīti Kumār Caṭṭopādhyāya contains articles by Hiralāl Jain and A.N. Upādhye on the literature of Jainism and Jain texts included in the vernacular literature written in Prākṛt and Apabhraṃśa.
Aside from these brief survey histories given in general reference works on Indian literature, numerous specialized studies dealing more exclusively with Jain literature have also appeared. [16] Already in 1883-1885, Albrecht Weber had written a detailed study of the Jain canon in his two-part article "Ueber die heiligen Schriften der Jaina". A much shorter description of the canon appeared in U.D. Barodia's (1909: 87-107) little introductory work History and Literature of Jainism.[17] In 1913, Johannes Hertel added a brief essay on the general status of Jain literary studies entitled "Die Erzählungsliteratur der Jains."
The following decades saw the rise of numerous Jain literary histories concerned with Jain literature in its totality or with particular expressions and forms.[18] General surveys of Jain literature include Mohanlāl Dalīcand Deśāī's Jain Sāhitya no Saṃkṣipt Itihās (1933a) and his Short History of Jaina Literature (1933b). More specialized literary histories have been devoted to the Jain Śvetāmbara canon,[19] Jain philosophical literature,[20] as well as Jain texts in Prākṛt,[21] Apabhraṃśa,[22] Sanskrit,[23] Tamil,[24] Hindi,[25] Gujarati,[26] and Rājasthānī.[27] The most comprehensive literary history of Jainism to date is the seven-volume encyclopedia entitled Jain Sāhitya kā Bṛhad Itihās (first edition by Dośī, Jain, & Mehtā 1966-1981, second edition by Mālvaṇiyā & Mehtā 1989-1998). These volumes written by leading Jain scholars cover the Jain canon and its exegetical texts, treatises on karman, philosophical literature, poetry, narrative, drama, as well as Jain works written in the vernaculars of Kannaḍa, Tamil, and Marathi.
To be sure, these literary histories of Jainism are useful and convenient as histories and reference works, given that they describe a large variety of genres, authors, and texts. However, it must be recognized that they are rooted in universalist conceptions of literary history, which is problematic in a number of ways. Not only do they revolve around the basic conception of 'literature' as 'writing of excellence', which leads them to ignore a large number of Jain texts that are not considered sufficiently significant from a strictly literary point of view. Notably, the omitted texts may be important when considered from nonliterary perspectives, e.g., in terms of their religious or pragmatic significance. Further, it must also be recognized that these literary histories create generalities of 'Jainism' and 'Jain literature' that do not reflect historical reality. They describe a literature in abstract terms that never existed in any particular locality at a given point in time. That is to say, there never existed any single traditional manuscript library in India, which held all those works of Jain literature as presented in these literary histories.
Problems of Universalist Literary History and the Possibility of Alternative Approaches
In its universality (sāmānyatva) transcending time and space, the universalist literary history is subtly non-particular (aviśeṣa), objectifying a literature that never existed in its totality in any specific time and place, and it is therefore ultimately ahistoric and non-local. The disconnect of the universalist discourse from what is concrete and local inextricably leads to reified, centralized abstractions, such as the generalized notion of a national literary heritage, from which it seems necessary to retreat if the historian is to escape from communalist[28] or nationalist agendas.[29] Circumvention of ahistoric universals demands an inverse approach to literary history, which shall be explored in the present paper.
Instead of following the usual top-down macro-mode of the universal literary history, which sets out with a general notion of 'literature' and then proceeds through a periodization, the literary theorist may adopt a bottom-up micro-approach that starts with the text as a specific document and library, treats it as not merely limited to being an authorial composition but also as being an object of use and engagement, and culminates in reaching a critical, decentralized understanding of cultural heritage. This is what shall here be called a 'localized literary history'.[30]
The Latin American literary historian Mario J. Valdés has provided a theoretical groundwork that may serve as a beginning for thinking about such an alternative approach. Valdés (2002: 65) criticized national literary histories for bestowing legitimacy to the idealized heritage that they represent, constituting a presumption of a normative cultural identity while simultaneously excluding and repressing cultural forms that did not meet with the historian's notion of accepted heritage. Basing himself on Paul Ricoeur's treatment of the notion of effective history, Valdés (2002: 69) went on to call for the writing of an open literary history that avoids exclusivity by transcending the constraints of any a priori prescribed models of what literature ought to be. Instead, he suggested viewing literature as an open system of explanation of the multiple literary shoots and branches that come forth from what he called 'cultural nodes', referring to culture-altering historic events. Further, Valdés (2002: 95) saw an open literary history as the description of related events of literary composition and re-composition of those texts that have the capacity to provoke reflection and engender a redescription of the rich diversity of life as it is encountered. To this end, Valdés (2002: 81) stressed the need for including reception studies in literary history by thinking of the reception of a text as an aesthetic experience in the present and thereby to treat writing not only as a historic document but also as the experience of its past and present readers. The question of experience brings in a need to consider the subsequent communities of literary users, shifting the focus of the literary history away from its traditional primary concern with the production of texts as a narrative of who wrote which composition when. Consequently, Valdés (2002: 96) emphasized the importance of connecting literary history with the social sciences, including geography, demography, political economics, linguistics, anthropology, and sociology.[31]
Valdés' call for an open literary history constitutes a welcome and decisive critique of the traditional communalist or national literary history.[32] However, his proposed approach of selecting those literary compositions that have the capacity to provoke reflection as the primary object for the literary history still involves a hermeneutical limitation that is superimposed by the historian as a universal notion of what constitutes 'literature'. In this sense, Valdés may transcend the confines of the national literary history but does so merely by replacing a narrower normative notion with a broader generality, thinking as he does of literature as a transnational phenomenon, such as the overall literary culture of Latin America.[33] Though the approach of Valdés may devote more attention to writings that fall outside the confines of the nationalist agendas of cultural heritage, his method essentially remains a top-down, universalist model.
The bottom-up mode of the localized literary history attempts to step away from any such imposition by the literary historian of normative notions of literary heritage. This is achieved by not taking its starting-point in a universal abstraction of 'literature' but by instead approaching the text as what shall here be called 'sub-text', literally meaning 'that which lies beneath the text'.[34] What lies beneath the text is the text as document, as artifact. The sub-text is the text as book or manuscript, i.e., the text as a physical object. The notion of sub-text allows the literary historian first and foremost to see the text as a concrete, localized phenomenon, before attention is given to the text in universalist terms as an authorial work ('epi-text') or as a work expressive of a (historical) referent of its narrative contents ('hypertext'). The localized literary history of the sub-text sidesteps some of the central suppositions of the universalist literary history amounting to notions of certain authors, genres, periods, and languages as being more significant than others. Instead, a local literary collection is considered in terms of its actual proliferation of texts, typically including various 'minor' or 'marginal' texts, 'odd' genres, and writings in local dialects that tend to be excluded when adhering to the universalist approach.
Localized Literary Histories of Jainism
While universal histories of Jain literature have tended to focus on doctrinally and narratively important authors, such as Kundakunda, Haribhadra, and Hemacandra, the historian of localized literature is able also to include various 'lesser' writings that may have been of local interest, for example due to their devotional or pragmatic utility.
Two earlier studies on Jain literature may be singled out for having moved partially in the direction of favoring sub-texts over universal conceptions of literary history. The first is the 1967 monograph by Kastūr Cand Kāslīvāl (1920-1998) entitled Jaina Grantha Bhanḍārs in Rājasthān, which was a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Rajasthan. During the 1940s-60s, Kāslīvāl surveyed eighteen major Jain manuscript libraries in Jaipur and published Hindi catalogs of fifteen of these collections (Kāslīvāl 1949, 1954, 1957, 1962). He then enlarged the scope of his survey visiting over a hundred manuscript archives throughout Rajasthan and in 1972 published a further volume cataloging forty-five Jain libraries from around the state. His 1967 monograph describes the history and nature of these archives and provides a general description of the regional Jain literature based on his firsthand knowledge of a large number of collections, though without offering in-depth analysis of any single archive. In the wealth of information that Kāslīvāl provides about local Rajasthani libraries, a sense of regional literary interests and local histories begins to emerge, which is fundamental to the study of sub-texts and localized literary history.
The second study is an article from 1995 by John E. Cort entitled "The Jain Knowledge Warehouses: Traditional Libraries in India." Cort's focus is the manuscript collections in the town of Pāṭaṇ in northern Gujarat, located just south of the border to Rajasthan in Western India. Cort's article describes the outer circumstances for the traditional Jain temple libraries, mainly with regard to their past and present administration. He also discusses the manner in which Western and Indian academics sought access to these archives in the nineteenth century. For a localized literary history of Jainism, the main contribution of Cort's article is the understanding it provides of the roles that manuscript archives play in the Jain community.
The case-study to be presented below departs from Kāslīvāl and Cort in two imperative regards. Instead of Kāslīvāl's broad regional description, the focus is here on a single archive of manuscripts in order to reach a truly localized understanding of sub-texts. Further, in place of Cort's spotlight on library administration and ownership, the aim is here to turn to the sub-texts themselves to see what they may reveal about literary history and community.
The following discussion will proceed in two steps contained in parts II and III of the article. Part II provides a case-study of a local collection of Jain manuscripts, namely the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār manuscript library belonging to the Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān institute in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The author visited the institute for a period of three months in March-May 2011, where he analyzed the archive's handwritten inventory (granthasūci) in detail and examined selected manuscripts. Many hours were also spent discussing Jain literature and the library's history with the institute director Professor Emeritus Dr. Kamal Chand Sogani and curator Mrs. Shakuntala Jain. Following an introduction to the collection, part II of the present article surveys the first three general areas of sub-texts found in the library, namely the genres of narratives (purāṇa, carita, and kathā), doctrinal works (dharma, darśana, ācāra), and texts on logic and epistemology (nyāyaśāstra and tarka). Part III of the article will theoretically discuss the concrete results derived from having applied the notions of sub-text and localized literary history to this case-study and will consider the ramifications of the method for the overall study of cultural heritage. Eventual readers, whose interest lies less in Jain literature and more in theoretical aspects, may wish to skip part II and go directly to part III.
PART II: CASE-STUDY
The Jain Manuscript Libraries of Jaipur
The Indian state of Rajasthan is one of the richest repositories for Jain literature worldwide. Prior to the introduction and implementation of modern methods of printing in the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, the hand-copied manuscript was the most efficient technology for the storage of knowledge, embodying a living intellectual transmission of thought and education. As a center of Jain erudition, Rajasthan was a place where several authors wrote news works, while scores of professional and lay scribes continuously copied old ones, resulting in a very rich literary heritage that was venerated and sponsored by the large community of local Jains along with supportive Hindu rulers and donors. After a period of some neglect during the twentieth century due to the prevalence of printed texts over handwritten copies, the age-old manuscripts as deponents of rich historical information have in recent years received renewed attention, particularly given the novel possibilities of making individual works more broadly accessible by means of digitization. Through regional provenance studies of individual works and collections, scholars and lay enthusiasts alike today face increasing opportunities for gaining new understanding of the historical role that respective manuscript libraries have played not only in the literary lives of local authors but also in the intellectual zest of its civic community of readers and patrons.
As storehouses of such knowledge, the Jain manuscript libraries of Rajasthan are exceptional. It is these collections that contain the oldest dated Jain palm leaf manuscripts. It is here that eighty percent of the extant works written in the medieval vernacular of Apabhraṃśa, the literary proto-type of modern Hindi, have been preserved. Also, more than half of the works written in Hindi by Jain authors were composed in Rajasthan and their writings are now found in its old libraries, occasionally in the form of the actual autographs. Naturally, the archives of Rajasthan are also the richest source for texts written in Rājasthānī and other local dialects. With its bountiful heritage, Rajasthan's manuscript libraries thus hold particular paramountcy for the study of Jainism and the subtle influence that the intellectual traditions of this religious community yielded on India at large.
Some of the oldest and most comprehensive Jain manuscript collections, which locally are referred to as granthabhaṇḍār, 'book repositories', or śāstrabhaṇḍār, 'knowledge repositories', are today found in Jaipur, the present-day state capital of Rajasthan.[35] With a population of 3.5 million, Jaipur is the largest city in the state. It was founded by the Kachwaha Rājput ruler Rājā Sawāi Jai Siṅgh II (1688-1743) in 1727, when the capital was shifted there from Āmer (a.k.a. Āmber, English 'Amber') due to population growth and water scarcity.[36]
The history of the former capital, Āmer, reaches back to the tenth century CE. It is located in the Aravalli Mountains overlooking the Jaipur plain, with a distance of some eleven kilometers from Jaipur city center. Like many other places in Rajasthan, Āmer had a considerable Jain population as attested by the numerous Jain temples of the old city, such as the Śvetāmbara Candraprabhū Jain Mandir, the Mūlgambhara Mandir, the Dādābāḍī Mandir, the Nandīśvar Dvīp Mandir, and the Nemināth Saṃvāla.
When the Jains moved from Āmer and the surrounding areas to the newly founded capital of Jaipur in the mid-eighteenth century, they brought with them a number of manuscript collections that came to be housed in Jaipur's new temples and libraries. Today, there are forty-nine Jain granthabhaṇḍārs in Jaipur that in total possess circa 56,000 manuscripts.[37] In terms of sectarian distribution, it should be noted that Jaipur is a stronghold of the Digambara sect with only a very small presence of the peer Śvetāmbara tradition. While there are more than a hundred smaller and larger Digambara temples in the city, there are only four small Śvetāmbara establishments.[38] Hence, a study of the Jain granthabhaṇḍārs of Jaipur is by and large a study of the local Digambara heritage.
Eighteen of the Jain manuscript libraries in Jaipur were surveyed by Kāslīvāl (1967: 43-59), including (1) the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār, (2) the granthabhaṇḍār of Sarasvatī Bhavan Baḍā Mandir, (3) the Bābā Dūlīcand śāstrabhaṇḍār,[39] (4) the granthabhaṇḍar of Pāṇḍya Lūṇkaraṇ, (5) the śāstrabhaṇḍār of Jain Mandir Bādhicand, (6) the granthabhaṇḍār of Digambar Ṭholiyā Jain Mandir, (7) the granthabhaṇḍār of Jain Mandir Pāṭoḍī, (8) Candraprabha Sarasvatī bhaṇḍār, (9) the śāstrabhaṇḍār of Jobner Mandir, (10) the bhaṇḍār at Pārśvanāth Digambar Jain Sarasvatī Bhavan, (11) the śāstrabhaṇḍār of Godhā Mandir, (12) the śāstrabhaṇḍār of Digambar Jain Mandir Saṅghījī, (13) the collection at Digambar Jain Mandir Laśakar, (14) the granthabhaṇḍār of Nayā Mandir (Jain Mandir Bairāṭhiyān), (15) the granthabhaṇḍār of Codhariyān kā Mandir, (16) the collection of Kālā Chābarā Jain Mandir, (17) the śāstrabhaṇḍār of Megharājajī Mandir, and (18) the Sarasvatī Bhavan of Yaśodānanda Jain Mandir. Though five decades have now passed since Kāslīvāl's research and much have changed since then, his study and catalogs remain the prime sources of information for Jain manuscripts in the city.[40]
The focus of the present case-study is the first of these libraries, viz. the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār belonging to the Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān.
The Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār
The Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān institute houses one of the largest and most comprehensive Jain manuscript libraries in Jaipur. It is located at the Digambar Nasiyāṃ Bhaṭṭārakjī complex, 34/306 Sawai Ram Siṅgh Road, Jaipur 302004, Rajasthan, which is found near the Nārāyaṇ Siṅgh Circle, opposite the City Pulse Plaza shopping mall. The complex belongs to the Digambar Jain Atiśaya Kṣetra Mahāvīr-jī Trust. It is placed next to the Ādināth Mandir, a Digambara Jain temple founded in 1751. [41] Being two kilometers south of the old city, the temple was originally placed in an agricultural surrounding, but the area is today a central part of the newer districts of Jaipur, after the town sprawled beyond the old city-walls in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Roy 1978: 112f.).
The Nasiyāṃ complex includes lecture halls, teaching facilities, a guest house, as well as the Apabhraṃśa Sāhitya Academy. The academy is a teaching program with about a dozen employees who are educators in Prākṛt and Apabhraṃśa languages. The program offers a Hindi correspondence course for learning Prākṛt and Apabhraṃśa as well as a class-based Prākṛt and Apabhraṃśa program in English available to foreigners. Its program is based on the pedagogical principle of making Prākṛt and Apabhraṃśa accessible to learners without necessitating prior knowledge of Sanskrit. The institute and its library are in the daily care of trustee and director (saṃyojaka) Dr. Kamal Chand Sogani, retired Professor of Philosophy from M.L. Sukhadia University in Udaipur.
The manuscript library is housed in the basement of the complex. The texts are kept in twenty-four large metal cabinets (almirah), with each manuscript wrapped separately in a cloth (veṣṭana), on which is placed a label indicating the text's reference number. The majority of the collection comes from an old library known as the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār, meaning "the śāstra-repository of Āmer."
Originally, this library was known under the name Bhaṭṭāraka Devendrakīrtī Śāstrabhaṇḍār, meaning "the śāstra-repository of Bhaṭṭāraka Devendrakīrti," in memory of the influential Jain cleric (bhaṭṭāraka) Devendrakīrti (a.k.a. Mahendrakīrti), who was active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Āmer and who was involved in the upkeep of this particular manuscript collection (Kāslīvāl 1967: 44). A memorial pavilion (chatrī) for Bhaṭṭāraka Devendrakīrti along with pavilions for two other famous nineteenthcentury bhaṭṭārakas, Kṣemendrakīrti and Surendrakīrti, can today be visited in front of the Indralok building, located next door to the Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān institute.[42]
A bhaṭṭāraka, literally meaning "venerable lord," is a chaste Digambara cleric who has not taken full ordination as a Jain monk (muni or sādhu). Historically, a bhaṭṭāraka was often learned and in many regards similar to a Hindu paṇḍita.[43] The tradition of bhaṭṭārakas serving as priests in local Jain temples and becoming predominantly responsible for the upkeep of the Jain tradition evolved around the twelfth-thirteenth centuries (Long 2009: 72f.), when the tradition of naked Digambara monks became less acceptable in the new Muslim society with the onset of Islamic rule (Cort 2002: 40f., Jaini 2008: 20, 26ff.). Since the bhaṭṭārakas were technically seen as lay-practitioners in spite of their vow of chastity, they could be more involved with the affairs of the lay-community than had been possible for the fully ordained monks, which led many bhaṭṭārakas to take an increased interest in more secular religious sciences, such as astrology and prognostics (jyotiṣa) or Tantric rituals (mantra) conducted for the purpose of the protection and prosperity of the laity. The bhaṭṭāraka tradition has strongly waned since the nineteenth century, whence the Digambara tradition has witnessed a new rise of the tradition of fully ordained munis.[44] Most of the manuscript-libraries of Jaipur were founded and maintained by bhaṭṭāraka clerics, for which reason their contents often reflect the particular literary and religious interests of the bhaṭṭārakas.[45]
At first, the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār was housed in the Nemināth Sāṃvala-jī, a wellknown Digambara Jain temple in Āmer. Hence, the collection is, in fact, an old library dating back to before the mid-eighteenth century, with the majority of the manuscripts having been copied between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Around the middle of the twentieth century, the library came into the care of the Digambar Jain Atiśaya Kṣetra Śrī Mahāvīr-jī Trust, at which point it was moved from Āmer to Jaipur. It was initially kept in a private house in the old city on Maniharo kā Rastā belonging to Mr. Badhicand Gaṅgvāl. In 1947, the trust established the Sāhitya Research Department at a complex called Mahāvīr Bhavan and the library was moved there. The Sāhitya Research Department was renamed Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān in 1982. Finally, in 1988, the trust established the Apabhraṃśa Sāhitya Academy at its current location within the Nasiyāṃ complex and moved the Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān institute with the library to its current location within this complex.
Originally, the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār consisted of 2605 manuscripts and 150 notebooks of mixed contents (guṭaka). A Hindi catalog thereof was published by Kāslīvāl in 1949. A general description in English is also found in Kāslīvāl's (1967: 44f.) dissertation. The collection has since been supplemented by 1281 other manuscripts that were obtained by the foundation from various private donors and all the 4036 manuscripts are now kept together in the Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān, in their totality still being referred to as the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār. All the manuscripts are written on paper. The oldest text is an Apabhraṃśa manuscript of the Uttarapurāṇa copied in 1334 CE, produced in the area formerly called Yoginīpur located in the Qutab Minār area of present-day southern New Delhi. A very important work of the collection is a sixteenth-century Apabhraṃśa manuscript of Paumacariu, a Jain version of the Rāmāyaṇa story composed by Kavi Svayambhū in the eighth century, which is said to be the finest manuscript of its kind throughout India.
The Jain Vidyā Saṃsthān has in recent years received funding from the National Manuscript Mission (NMM),[46] a governmental program aimed at preserving and digitizing Indian manuscript collections. Consequently, efforts have been made to repair and conserve damaged manuscripts, and the NMM has digitized the library's important collection of Apabhraṃśa texts. There are indefinite plans to make these texts available online along with a full catalog of the collection.
Aside from Kāslīvāl's printed catalog, the whole collection including newly added materials has meanwhile been catalogued in the form of a handwritten Devanāgarī list (granthasūci) of all manuscripts, specifying each manuscript's running number, manuscript number, title, author, genre, paper size, numbers of folios, language, completeness, year of copying, and name of scribe, with eventual further remarks written in Hindi. The handlist divides the materials into fourteen categories divided according to genres and topics. The fourteen categories and their total number of manuscripts are:
1. Stories, biographies, and fables (purāṇa, carita, kathā): 810 manuscripts
2. Religion, philosophy, and conduct (dharma, darśana, ācāra): 943 manuscripts
3. Epistemology and logic (nyāyaśāstra, tarka): 95 manuscripts
4. Grammar (vyākaraṇa): 124 manuscripts
5. Lexicons (kośa): 67 manuscripts
6. Poetics (rasa, chanda, alaṃkāra, kāvyaśāstra): 168 manuscripts
7. Astrology and prognostics (jyotiṣa): 255 manuscripts
8. Mantra and rituals (mantra, karmakāṇḍa): 142 manuscripts
9. Medicine (āyurveda): 87 manuscripts
10. Praises (stotra): 60 manuscripts
11. Texts for worship, recitation, and rites (pūjā, pāṭha, vidhāna): 355 manuscripts
12. Miscellaneous texts (anya): 183 manuscripts
13. Books of mixed contents (guṭaka): 722 manuscripts
14. Legends (itihāsa): 25 manuscripts
Total number of manuscripts: 4036
In what follows, a brief analysis of the first three categories of the collection will be presented. A study of the other categories remains a topic for further research. While the analysis does not amount to a full literary history based on the collection, it is a preliminary survey discussing what sub-texts the collection holds in each genre, thereby indicating the library's potential for serving as the basis for writing a localized literary history.
Jain Stories, Biographies, and Fables (Purāṇa, Carita, Kathā)
This category contains 810 manuscripts, including 429 manuscripts in Sanskrit, 223 in Hindi, 119 in Apabhraṃśa, fourteen in Prākṛt, twelve in Ḍhūṃḍhārī (the northeastern dialect of Rājasthānī spoken in the region of Jaipur), eight in Gujarātī, four in Rājasthānī, and one in Tamil.[47] With such a large amount of manuscripts, it seems that most of the major Jain Digambara narrative works are represented in the collection. It is often the case that different versions of the same story are found in several manuscripts of different languages, e.g., a story in an Apabhraṃśa manuscript may also be found rendered into Sanskrit or Hindi in other manuscripts, or a story in a Sanskrit manuscript might additionally be narrated in Apabhraṃśa or Hindi manuscripts. This indicates processes of translation presumably undertaken either for the sake of making popular stories readable to a wider audience in the common vernacular of the time, i.e., Apabhraṃśa in the sixth-twelfth centuries and Hindi from the thirteenth century onwards, or for the sake of raising vernacular stories into the literary language of Sanskrit.
Given the size of the collection of these genres, it is here not possible to mention all the included works. Yet, some remarks will be made on manuscripts that appear to contain the most popular stories in that these stories are attested by more than a single manuscript.[48]
The genre of stories (purāṇa) mainly covers chronicles describing the deeds of ancient heroes, which in Jain literature often are parallel-versions of the respective Hindu purāṇas. There are quite a few popular compositions written in Sanskrit. An early Sanskrit author of this genre is Ācārya Jinasena I (died 887), the co-author of one of the most beloved Jain epic anthologies entitled Mahāpurāṇa, "The Great Story." It is only the first part of this anthology that was penned by Ācārya Jinasena I, the famous Ācārya who was the guru of King Amoghavarṣa (815-877) (Kāslīvāl 1967: 137). Jinasena I's part of the poem bears the subtitle Ādipurāṇa, "The First Story" or "The Story of the Beginning," depending on what the word ādi, "first, beginning," is taken to mean in the present title. The text deals with the life of the first religious founder, who literally is called a 'ford-maker' (tīrthaṅkara) or 'the first lord' (Ādinātha), namely the yogin Ṛṣabha. Ṛṣabha may be seen as the Jain equivalent of Manu, the Hindu concept of the founder of human civilization. The Ādipurāṇa also includes the story of Ṛṣabha's son, King Bharata, thereby tying the story of the tīrthaṅkara in with the Hindu Mahābhārata epic. The second part of the Mahāpurāṇa is called the Uttarapurāṇa, "The Subsequent Story," and was composed by Jinasena I's student Ācārya Guṇabhadra (ninth-tenth centuries). The Uttarapurāṇa provides further stories of the remaining twentythree tīrthaṅkaras as well as anecdotes of twelve legendary monarchs (cakravartin) along with twenty-seven heroes, being a group of figures consisting of nine vāsudevas, nine baladevas, and nine anti-vāsudevas (prativāsudeva), who are protagonists and antagonists associated with the stories of Rāma and Kṛṣṇa, incorporating stories from the Hindu Vaiṣṇavaite bhāgavata-lore. Taken together, the twenty-four tīrthaṅkaras, twelve cakravartins, and twenty-seven heroes form the group known as the 63 "great men" (mahāpuruṣa) or the 63 "illustrious men" (śalākāpuruṣa). It should be noted that Ācārya Hemacandra-sūri (1088/9-1172) later adopted the same stories as the theme of his composition Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacaritra, "Lives of the Sixty-Three Illustrious Men,"[49] but that work of this most famous Śvetāmbara author is not represented in the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār. Guṇabhadra, on the other hand, is in fact one of the best represented authors in this section of the collection. Among his other writings, several works are found in numerous manuscripts, namely the Vardhamānapurāṇa, "The Story of the Present [Tīrthaṅkara]" describing the life of Mahāvīra, as well as two fables entitled Jinadattakathā, "The Fable of Jinadatta," being the story of a Jain merchant, and Nandīśvarakathānaka, "The Little Fable of Nandīśvara."
Another early popular story in Sanskrit is Jinasena II's (eighth-ninth centuries) Harivaṃśapurāṇa, telling the story of the twenty-second tīrthaṅkara Neminātha intertwined with the legend of the heroes Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma, thereby setting the Hindu story of the same title as well as the Mahābhārata in a Jain frame. The story of these two conquerors is also the theme of several other, slightly later popular stories in Sanskrit. These include the Rajasthani Bhaṭṭāraka Somasena's (c. sixteenth century) Padmapurāṇa, "The Lotus Story," which is also known under the title Rāmapurāna, "The Story of Rāma." Further, there is Daulatarāma Kāsalīvāla's (dates unknown) Padmapurāṇabhāṣā, "Retelling of the Lotus Story," Brahma Jinadāsa's (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries) Harivaṃśapurāṇa, and BhavārthaDīpika Dharasvāmin's (dates unknown) Bhagavatamahāpurāṇa, "The Great Story of the Lord." Aside from such Rāmāyaṇa-adaptations, certain stories of ancient tīrthaṅkaras are also particularly beloved, for example witnessed by the many manuscripts of Īśvarakṛṣṇadāsa's (seventeenth century) Munisuvratapurāṇa, "The Story of Munisuvrata," which was composed in 1624 and gives an account of the twentieth tīrthaṅkara Munisuvrata. Another such text is Bhūdharadāsa's Pārśvanāthapurāṇa, "The Story of Pārśvanātha," telling the account of the twenty-third tīrthaṅkara Pārśvanātha.
Popular works in this genre also include some Apabhraṃśa texts, such as Jasakirti's Pāṇḍupurāṇa, "The Story of the Pāṇḍavas," being a Jain version of the Mahābhārata story of the five Pāṇḍava brothers. Another well-represented Apabhraṃśa text is the Mahāpurāṇa, "The Great Story," composed by the foremost Apabhraṃśa-poet Puppayānta (known in Sanskrit as Puṣpadanta, tenth century). The work was composed in the period 959-965 and like its Sanskrit namesake describes the lives of the 63 great men.
The second genre contained in the first category of the Āmer library is the genre of "biography" or "adventures" (carita or caritra), literally meaning "wanderings." Such texts either contain stories of tīrthaṅkaras and in those cases are hardly distinguishable from similar texts of the purāṇa genre, or consist of personal biographies of historic religious masters and significant figures, for example important Jain monks, writers, royal patrons, and so forth.[50] Popular Sanskrit works in the library of such texts include Jinadāsa's (eighth century) Rāmacaritra, "The Biography of Rāma." In the twelfth century, Hemacandra-sūri (1088/9-1172) composed the Nemināthacaritra, "The Biography of Neminātha" (a.k.a. Nemijinacaritra, "The Biography of the Jina Nemi"), telling the story of the twenty-second tīrthaṅkara, which likewise is represented by several manuscripts. Also, there is Malliṣeṇa's (thirteenth century) Nāgakumāracaritra, "The Biography of Nāgakumāra." Certain biographies of Jain kings and patrons are also popular, such as Vādībhasiṃha's (dates unknown) Kṣatracūḍāmaṇi, "The Wish-Fulfilling Gem of Supremacy," which is also known as Jīvandharasvāmicaritra, "The Biography of Jīvandharasvāmin," and Padmanābha Kāyasthā's (fourteenth-fifteenth centuries) Yaśodharacaritra, "The Biography of Yaśodhara," which was composed in 1405. Another adaptation of the same story is Jñānakīrti's (dates unknown) text of the same title. Other important biographies include Brāhmacārī's (dates unknown) Jambūsvāmicaritra, "The Biography of Jambūsvāmin," Somakīrti's (dates unknown) Pradyumnacaritra, "The Biography of Pradyumna," giving the story of Kṛṣṇa's son Pradyumna, along with Kavi Siṅha's (thirteenth century) text of the same title, Vardhamāna Bhaṭṭāraka Deva's (dates unknown) Vaśaṃgacarita, "The Biography of Vaśaṃga," and Pāṇḍe Lālakanda's (dates unknown) namesake text, along with Vibudhaśrīdhara's (dates unknown) Bhaviṣyadattacaritra, "The Biography of Bhaviṣyadatta," and Jagannātha's (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries) Susvanidhāna, "The Treasury of Susva." Another royal biography is the Hindi poet Parimal's (seventeenth century) Śrīpālacaritra, "The Biography of the Glorius Pāla." In this section are also found some popular non-Jain works of Sanskrit poetry, including Harṣa's Naiṣadhacaritra, "The Biography of Naiṣadha," and Kālidāsa's drama Abhijñānaśakuntalanāṭaka, "The Recognition of Śakuntalā." Major Jain Apabhraṃśa works of the genre include Dhaṇavāla's (c. tenth century) Bhavisayattacariu, "The Biography of Bhavisayatta," Puppayānta's (tenth century) Pāyakumāracariu, "The Adventures of the Five Youths," Kaṇakumāra's (dates unknown) Karakaṇḍacariu, "The Biography of Karakaṇḍa," and Jasakiti's (dates unknown) Candappahacariu, "The Biography of Candappaha."
The genre of fables (kathā) typically consists of tales meant to illustrate various moral principles. In this genre, the most popular works of the library include the poet Māgha's (c. seventh century) Śiśupālavadha, "The Slaying of King Śiśupāla," which is based on a Kṛṣṇaepisode from the Mahābhārata, Murāri's (c. eighth-tenth centuries) play Anarghyarāghava, "The Priceless Descendant of Raghu," being an adaptation of the Rāmāyaṇa, Guṇacandrasūri's (twelfth century) Nandīśvaravidhānakathā, "The Fable of Nandīśvara's Destiny," Bhaṭṭāraka Śubhacandradeva's (1393-1450) Nandīśvarāṣṭasahasrikā Kathā, "The Fable of Nandīśvara in 8000 verses," Guṇākara-sūri's (fourteenth century) Samyaktvakaumudī, "The Night-Lotus of Righteousness," Śrutasāgara's (sixteenth century) Anantavratakathā, "Fable of the Endless Vow," as well as his Vratakathākośa, "Repository of Fables about Vows," Jinadeva's (dates unknown) Madanaparājaya, "The Vanquishing of Passion," Śvetā's (dates unknown) Samyaktvakaumudī, "The Night-Lotus of Righteousness," and Bhāsamalla's (dates unknown) Niśibhojanakathā, "The Fable of Eating at Night."
The larger oeuvre of certain popular authors is particularly well-represented. The best represented story-writer is the local Rajasthani author Bhaṭṭāraka Sakalakīrti (born 1386), who was one of the most illustrious scholars of his day. The following of his works are represented with numerous manuscripts: Ṛṣabhanāthacarita, "The Biography of Ṛṣabhanātha" (the first Tīrthaṅkara), Dhanyakumāracaritra, "The Biography of Dhanyakumāra," Parśvanāthacaritra, "The Biography of Parśvanātha" (the twenty-third Tīrthaṅkara), Purāṇasārasaṃgraha, "Anthology of a Compendium of Stories," Yaśodharacaritra, "The Biography of Yaśodhara," Sukumāracarita, "The Biography of the Good Youth," Sudarśanacaritra, "The Biography of Sudarśana," Śāntināthapurāṇa, "The Story of Sāntinātha" (the sixteenth Tīrthaṅkara), Pradyumnacaritra, "The Biography of Pradyumna" (Kṛṣṇa's son), Varddhamānapurāṇa or Varddhamānacaritra, "The Story of the Present [Tīrthaṅkara]," and Śrīpālacaritra, "The Biography of King Śrī Pāla." The life of Sakalakīrti has been described in a Hindi biography entitled Sakalkīrtirās, "A Paean of Sakalakīrti" composed by his pupil Sāmal (fifteenth century).
Another popular local author is Bhaṭṭāraka Śubhacandra (sixteenth century), a Rajasthani paṇḍita belonging to the line of Sakalakīrti, who wrote more than thirty works. His most popular compositions in the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār include Jīvaṃdharacaritra, "The Biography of Jīvandhara," the Pāṇḍavapurāṇa, "The Story of the Pāṇḍava Brothers," the Puṣpāsavakathākośa, "The Flower Nectar Repository of Stories," and the Śreṇikacaritra, "The Biography of [King] Śreṇika."
Also, there is Nemidatta (sixteenth century) with three very popular works, viz. the Dhanapālacaritra, "The Biography of Dhanapāla," the Nemijinacaritra, "The Life of Jina Nemi[nātha]" (also known under the title Nemināthapurāṇa, "The Story of Neminātha"), i.e., a biography of the twenty-second tīrthaṅkara, which was composed in 1518, and finally the Dhanyakumāracaritra, "The Adventures of the Fortunate Youth."
Jain Religious Works, Philosophical Treatises, and Texts on Conduct
This category contains 943 manuscripts, including 350 manuscripts in Prākṛt, 347 in Sanskrit, 177 in Hindi, 33 in Apabhraṃśa, sixteen in Gujarātī, fourteen in Ḍhūṃḍhārī, two in Rājasthānī, two in Dakṣiṇī (the Marāṭhvāḍā dialect of Marāṭhī), one in Puñjabī, and one in Jayapurī. It is notable that unlike the category of stories, biographies, and fables where there is a large number of manuscripts in Sanskrit, Hindi, and Apabhraṃśa but very few in Prākṛt, the majority of the manuscripts of the present category are in Prākṛt, slightly outweighing the number of Sanskrit manuscripts. The number of Apabhraṃśa manuscripts in this category is quite small, as very few philosophical works were composed in this language. Since the total number of manuscripts is again too large for any systematic overview, only the most popular texts represented by more than a single manuscript shall be discussed here.[51]
The popular literature of the earliest period includes a number of important Prākṛt works. Among the very earliest are two texts ascribed to Mahāvīra's student Gautama (fourth century BCE) and to the slightly later patriarch of the Jain saṅgha Bhadrabāhu Svāmin (third century BCE), namely Gautamapṛcchā, "The Questions of Gautama," and the Kalpasūtra containing biographies of the Tīrthaṅkaras. Particularly, the works of the most prominent and beloved Digambara philosopher Kundakunda (ca. second-fourth century CE) are very wellrepresented with several copies of his major Prākṛt writings, such as the Pañcāstikāya, "The Five Ontological Categories," which lays out a systematic overview of existing entities (astikāya) including souls (jīva), the medium of movement (dharma), the medium of rest (adharma), space (ākāśa), and time (kāla); his Pravayanasāro, "The Essence of the Teachings," giving points on epistemology, metaphysics, and the conduct of monks; as well as his Ṣaḍpāhuḍa, "The Six Summaries," surveying major areas of doctrine. His absolutely most popular work is the Samayasāra, "The Essence of the Self," which especially deals with the qualities of the Self. This text is accompanied by copious commentaries in the bhaṇḍār, such as Amṛtacandra's (tenth century) Sanskrit commentary Samayasāravṛtti, "Unfolding the Essence of the Self." Another important commentary is Padmaprabha Maladhārideva's (twelfth-thirteenth centuries) Sanskrit text Tātparyavṛtti, "Unfolding the Purpose," which comments on Kundakunda's Niyamasāro, "The Essence of Restraint." It may be noted that the Digambaras have always had a remarkable ability to write exceptionally systematic treatises, such as Kundakunda's several sāra- and pāhuḍa-texts, which probably was caused by their belief that the proper transmission of the original Jain scriptures was lost and that the best recourse to preserving the teachings therefore was to put the key points of the teachings in order. Such systematic treatises are less often observed by authors writing from within the Śvetāmbara tradition, which instead focuses on what they consider to be a genuine transmission of the original Jain scriptures (āgama). Finally, another early Prākṛt work of note is the Tiloyapaṇṇatti, "Designations of the Three Realms," composed by the littleknown southerner Yati Vṛṣabha (dates unknown). This is the first text describing the layout of the universe (loya, loka). It is essentially an early work though it is said to contain some interpolations from later authors of the eighth-ninth centuries.
Besides the above-mentioned works in Prākṛt, the early centuries CE also witnessed the writing of several important Jain texts in Sanskrit, which likewise are found in the bhaṇḍār. The most influential among these is undoubtedly Umāsvāti's (a.k.a. Umāsvāmin, ca. second-fifth centuries CE) Tattvārthasūtra, "Sūtra on the Meaning of Reality," which is a concise compendium of Jain philosophy covering epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and self-realization. The text is represented by several manuscripts. Another significant early work is the logician Samantabhadra's (ca. sixth-seventh centuries CE) Ratnakaraṇḍa Śrāvakācāra, "Basket of Jewels on the Conduct of Lay-Practitioners," being one of the most popular treatises on the conduct (ācāra) of householders (śrāvaka, śrāvikā) in 150 verses.[52] The library also contains a few copies of the non-Jain philosopher Bhartṛhari's (c. 450-510) Vairāgyaśataka, "Hundred Verses on Detachment." The Sanskrit author Pūjyapāda (ca. fifthseventh centuries) is represented with manuscripts of his Sarvārthasiddhi, considered the preeminent commentary on Umāsvāti's/Umāsvāmin's Tattvārthasūtra, along with his Upāsakācāra, "The Conduct of Lay-Men," another work belonging to the "conduct" (ācāra) genre. It is notable that the famous Śvetāmbara-author Haribhadra-sūri (eighth century) is not well-represented with any of his major works, whereas Akalaṅka (eighth century), the father of Jain logic, is in this category only spoken for by his Svarūpasambodhana, "Recognizing the Self-Nature."
Prākṛt continued to be a literary language of choice even in the late medieval period of the tenth-twelfth centuries. Prākṛt authors of this age include Devasena (also written Devaseṇa, tenth century), who wrote the Ārādhanāsāra, "The Essence of Worship," describing self-realization, as well as his doxography Darśanasāra, "The Essence of Philosophical Views," written in 933. Another late Prākṛt author is Ācārya Vasunandin (twelfth century), whose Upāsakādhyāyana, "A Study for Laymen," provides a guideline to the moral conduct (ācāra) of householders. Further, there is Jinacandra (1450?-1514?) with his doxography Siddhāntasāra, "The Essence of Philosophical Positions," Hemacandra-sūri's (1088/9-1172) Śrutaskandha, "Aggregate of Oral Teachings," and the anonymous work Upadeśasiddhāntaratnamālā, "Jewel Rosary of Philosophical Positions pertaining to the Instructions." Yet, the most well-known Prākṛt author of the period is unquestionably Nemicandra (tenth-eleventh centuries), in particular his major philosophical treatise Dravyasaṃgraha, "Abridgment of Entities," which in 58 dense verses gives a pointed presentation of reality (tattva) and entities (dravya). This text is found in plentiful manuscript copies. His other works, in slightly fewer manuscripts, include the Pañcasaṃgraha, "Abridgment of the Five [Entities]," the Trilokasāra, "The Essence of the Three Worlds," composed in 953 or 972, and his Karmaprakṛti, "The Nature of Action."
As Sanskrit increasingly became the philosophical lingua franca, the same period saw the rise of several Jain authors, whose Sanskrit works are found in the bhaṇḍār. Amitagati (tenth-eleventh centuries), who otherwise is famous for his Yogasāra, "The Essence of Yoga," is here represented by the Dharmaparikṣā, "Analysis of the Teachings," composed in 1003. Another important Sanskrit author of the period is Ācārya Śubhacandra (eleventh century), the author of the main Digambara work on meditation (dhyāna), entitled Jñānārṇava, "The Sea of Knowledge." This is clearly a very popular work in the library, represented by seventeen manuscripts. Further, there is the local Rājasthānī author Bhaṭṭāraka Sakalakīrti (born 1386), who composed two important moral works entitled Praśnottaraśrāvakācāra, "Questions and Answers on the Conduct of Monks," and Mūlācārapradīpa, "A Lamp for the Basic Conduct." Also, there is the author Āśādhara (fourteenth century), whose moral work Sāgaradharmāmṛta, "Ambrosia of the Ocean-Like Dharma," composed in 1239, likewise stipulates the principles of proper conduct.
More recent doctrinal authors represented by several manuscripts in the library include Brahma Nemidatta (sixteenth century) with his Sanskrit text Dharmopadeśapīyūṣavarṣa Śrāvakācāra, "A Nectar-Rain of Dharma-Instruction on the Conduct of Monks." Further, there is Paṇḍita Meghāvī's (fifteenth century) Dharmasaṃgrahaśrāvakācāra, "An Abridgment of the Dharma concerning the Conduct of Monks" written in Sanskrit in 1484. A popular Hindi-author is Banārsīdās (1586-1643), a spiritualist layman and poet who was greatly inspired by the philosopher Kundakunda, with his Nāṭaka Samayasāra, "A Drama on the Essence of the Self" composed in 1636 and Banārsī Vilās, "The Enjoyment by [the Poet] Banārsī" dating from 1644.[53] Of further Sanskrit works, there is Ṭayoma Vipāditya's (dates unknown) Saptapadārthī, "The Seven Referents of Words," Ācārya Narendrasena's (dates unknown) doxography Siddhāntasārasaṃgraha, "Abridgment of the Essence of Philosophical Positions," and Muni Padmanandin's (dates unknown) Śrāvakācārasāroddhāra, "The Essential Conduct of Monks." Also, there is the Rajasthani scholar Bhaṭṭāraka Jñānabhūṣaṇa (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), here represented with the Ṣaṭkarmarāsa, "Paean to the Six Actions," written in the local Rājasthānī dialect, which likewise deals with moral conduct (ācāra).
There are very few Apabhraṃśa works of this category that are found in several manuscript copies. Of note is here Canda's (dates unknown) Rayaṇakaraṇḍu Śrāvakācāra, "Basket of Jewels on the Conduct of Lay-Practitioners," and Siri Amarakīrti's (twelfth century) Chakkamovaesa, "Six Instructions," composed in 1189, both being works on moral conduct (ācāra), which may account for their being composed in the common vernacular of the time as opposed to being written in Prākṛt or Sanskrit.
Jain Treatises on Epistemology and Logic (Nyāyaśāstra and Tarka)
The third category of treatises on epistemology (nyāya) and logic (tarka) contains 95 manuscripts. The vast majority of the texts in these genres are written in Sanskrit, with only four manuscripts in Prākṛt, one in Hindi, and a single text in the local northeastern Rājasthānī dialect Ḍhūṃḍhārī. The linguistic distribution of the texts clearly indicates that Sanskrit was the lingua franca for the study of epistemology and logic, which may be due to the fact that these sciences first arose from within the Hindu Nyāya tradition of the third-fourth centuries CE, whose texts were composed in Sanskrit, thereby establishing that language as the main medium for the study of these branches of knowledge.
The library's few Prākṛt works of such genres include Devaseṇa's (tenth century) Tattvasāra, "The Essence of Reality," his Ālāpapaḍḍhati, "Guide to Propositions," as well as two manuscripts of Mailla Dhavala's (dates unknown) Davvasahāva Payāsa, "Analysis of the Nature of Entities." The single Hindi manuscript is by an anonymous author and bears the title Ṣaḍdarśanavārtā, "Explication of the Six Philosophical Views." The single Ḍhūṃḍhārī manuscript was composed in 1669 by a certain Hemarāja and is entitled Nayacakrabālāvabodhaṃ Ṭīkāsahitam, "Awakening Children to the Wheel of Epistemology including a Commentary."
The 89 Sanskrit manuscripts shall here be listed in full in an attempted chronological order to the extent this is possible at the present stage of research, where so many authordates still remain unestablished. The manuscript of the earliest author placed in this category is the logician Samantabhadra's (ca. sixth-seventh century) Āptamīmāṃsā, "Examination of Trustworthiness," an author who was also represented in the above category of works on conduct (ācāra). His Āptamīmāṃsā provides a discussion of the premises for trustworthiness and is thus a quite early Indian work on the topic of the reliability of oral teachings (śabdapramāṇa or similar). The famous Śvetāmbara-philosopher Haribhadra-sūri (eighth century) is well-represented in the present category with two works, viz. his Nyāyāvatāravṛtti, "Commentary on the Entry into Epistemology," as well as his famous doxography Ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya, "Collection of the Six Philosophical Views." Another Śvetāmbara-author of the same period is Mānatuṅga (seventh century), whose work Ratnadīpikā, "The Jewel-Lamp," is found in the bhaṇḍār. Of the ninth-tenth centuries, there is Māṇīkyanandin's work on logic entitled Parīkṣāmukha, "Introduction to Analysis," in two manuscripts, along with a commentary entitled Parīkṣāmukha Laghuvṛtti, "A Simple Commentary on the Introduction to Analysis." Further, there is a commentary on the same text by Prabhācandra composed in ca. 825, entitled Prameyakamalamārtaṇḍa, "A Sun for the Lotus of What is to be Cognized." Devasena (also spelled Devaseṇa, tenth century), whose Prākṛt work Ālāpapaḍḍhati, "Guide to Propositions," was mentioned above in a single manuscript, is also found in ca. ten manuscripts apparently containing the same work in Sanskrit. Hemacandra-sūri's (1088/9-1172) oeuvre is represented with two manuscripts in the present category, namely his Pramāṇamīmāṃsā, "Examination of Reliability," including its autocommentary, as well as his Ananyayogavyavaccheda, "Distinguishing a Yoga-like No Other."
From more recent centuries, the library contains the works of five datable authors. The first is the Tattvajñānataraṅgiṇī, "Knowledge-Waves of Reality," composed in 1503 by the Rajasthani scholar Bhaṭṭāraka Jñānabhūṣaṇa (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries). This text, clearly being a popular work, is found in several manuscripts. The second is the logic work Tarkaparibhāṣā, "A Discourse on Reasoning," written by Keśavamiśra (sixteenth century?), likewise found in a number of manuscripts. The authorship of Vidyānandin (sixteenth century) is here represented with four of his works, namely the Aṣṭasahasrī, "8000 Verses" (3 manuscripts), the Pramāṇaparīkṣā, "Examination of Reliability," the Pattraparīkṣā, "Examination of Leaves," and the Āptaparīkṣā, "Examination of Trustworthiness" (also known as Āptamīmāṃsa) (in 3 manuscripts). The fourth author is Yaśovijaya (eighteenth century) with his Jainatarkabhāṣā, "Discourse on Jain Logic," while the fifth and final author is Abhinava Dharmabhūṣana (eighteenth century?) with three manuscripts of his Nyāyadīpikā, "A Lamp for Epistemology."
The category further contains the writings of fourteen authors, whose dates are not known at the current stage of research. These are: Annantabhaṭṭa's (or Annaṃbhaṭṭa) wellknown and very popular text Tarkasaṃgraha, "Abridgment of Reasoning" (twelve manuscripts), along with its auto-commentary Tarkasaṃgrahadīpikā, "Lamp for the Abridgment of Reasoning" (three manuscripts); Ācārya Bhāsarvajñā's Nyāyasāra, "The Essence of Epistemology"; Bhāvikanandin's Parīkṣāmukha, "Introduction to Analysis"; Cūḍāmaṇi Bhaṭṭācārya's Nyāyasiddhāntamañjarī, "Bouquet of Epistemological Philosophical Positions" (four manuscripts); Deva's Pramāṇanaya Tattvālaṃkāra, "Wisdom of Reliability, An Ornament of Reality"; Jayadevamitra's Tattvacintāmaṇipratyakṣa, "Direct Cognition of the Wish-Fulfilling Gem of Reality"; Mahopādhyāya Gaṇeśa's text of the same title; Kṛṣṇāśarman's Bhāṣadīpikā, "Lamp of Brightness"; Praśastadeva's Padārthadharmasaṃgrahabhāṣya, "Commentary on the Abridgment of Teachings on the Referents of Words"; Śivādityācārya's Saptapadārthī, "Seven Referents of Words"; Sudhāsvara's Duṣṭavādigajāṅkuśa, "The Elephant-Hook for Catching Faulty Speakers"; Udayanācārya's Kiraṇāvalī, "Rosary of Sunrays" (two manuscripts) with its commentary Kiraṇāvalīṭīkā composed by Padmanāyaka (two manuscripts); and, finally, Viśveśvara's Tarkacandrikā, "The Moon of Reasoning." Moreover, the category contains nine manuscripts by anonymous writers, including the following works: Astitāvivekanigamanirṇaya, "Ascertainment of Doctrines Distinguishing Existence"; Tattvadharmāmṛta, "The DharmaAmbrosia of Reality"; Dravyasāmānyaprarūpaṇāyāṃ Nayacakra, "A Wisdom-Wheel for Proper Illustrations of Universal Entities"; Nyāyagrantha, "A Book of Epistemology"; the logic text Capeṭikāprahasana, "A Slap of Mockery"; the logic text Jainadharmakhaṇḍanamaṇḍana, "An Ornament for the Destruction of the Jain Dharma" (seemingly an anti-Jain polemic); Śrīmacchārīrakamīmāṃsā, "Examination of the Glorious Embodied Soul"; Ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya, "Collection of the Six Philosophical Views"; and the disputatious text Dvijamukhacapeṭikā, "A Slap in the Face of the Twice-Born."
PART III: THE RAMIFICATIONS OF LOCALIZED LITERARY HISTORY
Localized Literary History as an Inverse Approach
The above preliminary examination of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār clearly reveals that a localized literary history based on this collection would depart from the existing universal literary histories of Jainism in four major regards.
First, given the overall extensiveness of Jain literature, some universal literary histories delimit their range by only covering particular types of texts. For example, Mālvaṇiyā and Soni's (2007) Jain Philosophy, published in Karl H. Potter's Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies series, confines its coverage to philosophical and epistemological works. Consequently, such topicalized literary histories do not disclose Jain literature in its fullness. In contrast thereto, the localized literary history takes into account the full breadth of Jain literature by including all the genres that are represented in the library at hand. The present case-study has only dealt with three of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār's fourteen textual categories, covering 1848 (46%) of the collection's 4036 manuscripts. Yet, even with this restriction, the study presents fictional and narrative books alongside doctrinal and philosophical works, thereby inviting the reader to think across the borders of erudite compartmentalization and consequently to view Jain literature in some of its richness and variety. Further study of the library will consider the archive's other eleven categories, bringing the library's full extent into view, subsumed under the remaining genres of grammar, lexicography, poetics, astrology and prognostics, mantra, medicine, praises, ritual, and legends. Such breadth stands in contrast to the general praxis of the universal literary history. Even the broadest history of Indian literature, e.g., the History of Indian Literature series edited by Jan Gonda, regards 'literature' in its standard definition as "writing of excellence," and consequently does not include rituals and liturgies, such as pūjā-texts, which are well-represented in the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār with at least 497 manuscripts (12%). The same may be said of the sevenvolume literary history of Jainism (Mālvaṇiyā & Mehtā 1989-1998), being the to-date most extensive history of Jain literature. Consideration of such 'substandard' forms of writing is, however, significant for studying actual textual usages aside from viewing reading as a mere intellectual pursuit i.e., what Valdés called the reception of a text as an aesthetic experience in the present and is consequently important for historical anthropology, e.g., with regard to the study of ritual and communities. Hence, the localized literary history reveals a heterogeneity and complexity of Jain literature in ways that are not achieved by the universal literary history.
Secondly, the universal literary history provides no way of knowing which literary genres are more widespread and represented by a higher number of manuscript copies in Jain literature. It informs about how many authors were writing in a given genre and how many individual works that genre includes, but it fails to communicate whether, for example, medical literature is more predominant in Indian libraries than stories or epistemological works. The localized literary history, on the other hand, demonstrates the proportions in which each genre is represented in the given collection. In the case of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār, it is immediately clear that, e.g., medical literature amounts to only 87 manuscripts (2%), whereas 835 manuscripts (21%) contain stories of various kinds (purāṇa, carita, kathā, and itihāsa) and 95 manuscripts (2%) concern epistemology and logic. Hence, the localized literary history attests the proliferation and popularity of genres in terms of manuscript distribution, whereas the universal literary history is concerned with the proliferation of genres regarding compositional distribution. In other words, the localized literary history reveals the preferences of the given community of text-users by measuring the number of manuscript copies they produced, while the universal history marks out the number of works originally composed in a given genre.
Thirdly, some universal histories delimit their range by only surveying works written in a particular language. Examples of such linguistically restricted works are J.C. Jain's (2004) History and Development of Prakrit Literature or Harivaṃśa Kochar's (1956) Apabhraṃśa-Sāhitya. It is likewise such linguistic delimitation that underpins the fundamental distinction between the classicist and the modern histories of Indian literature discussed in Part I of this article. Conversely, the localized literary history considers the full range of language materials available in the given collection as well as the distribution of works in each language in every included genre, thereby acknowledging another significant aspect of variance in Jain literature. In the case of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār, the first three categories of the library considered here, which amount in total to 1848 manuscripts, consist of 865 Sanskrit manuscripts (47%), 401 Hindi manuscripts (22%), 368 Prākṛt manuscripts (20%), 152 Apabhraṃśa manuscripts (8%), 27 Ḍhūṃḍhārī manuscripts (1%), 24 Gujarātī manuscripts (1%), six Rājasthānī manuscripts (0.3%), two Dakṣiṇī manuscripts (0.1%), one Jayapurī manuscript (0.05%), one Puñjabī manuscript (0.05%), and one Tamil manuscript (0.05%).[54] It is also to be observed that the major languages Sanskrit, Hindi, Prākṛt, and Apabhraṃśa are unevenly distributed in the three genres under consideration, thereby evincing linguistic preferences according to genre as well as the period of literary composition when the genre in question was at its peak. Sanskrit is used in 53% of the narrative texts (429 out of 810 manuscripts), 37% of doctrinal/philosophical texts (347 out of 943 manuscripts), and 94% of epistemological texts (89 out of 95 manuscripts). Hindi is used in 26% of narrative texts (223/810), 19% of doctrinal/philosophical texts (177/943), and 1% of epistemological texts (1/95). Prākṛt is used in 2% of narrative texts (14/810), 37% of doctrinal/philosophical texts (350/943), and 4% of epistemological texts (4/95). Apabhraṃśa is used in 15% of narrative texts (119/810), 4% of doctrinal/philosophical texts (33/943), and 0% of epistemological texts (0).
It thus follows that the vernaculars Apabhraṃśa and Hindi were mostly employed in narrative literature and to a lesser extent in doctrinal/philosophical writings. The Prākṛt vernaculars were almost exclusively used for writing doctrinal/philosophical works. Sanskrit remained the dominant language in all three genres, which must mean that it continued to be actively used throughout the periods of literary production and text-copying reflected in the collection. By providing such data, the localized literary history shows a side of Indian literature in general and of Jain literature in particular, which is not revealed by the universal literary history. It is also to be remarked that the localized literary history draws attention to works in local vernaculars, such as Ḍhūṃḍhārī, Rājasthānī, etc., which usually are omitted in non-specialized universal literary histories.
Fourthly, by outlining the character of a particular library belonging to a given temple or institute, the localized literary history presents a specific collection, whose composition was affected by sectarian, regional, and temporal interests and concerns. The standard universal literary histories of Jainism include works from various sects, sub-schools, regions, and periods, setting these side-by-side, and as a result downplays or outright ignores such differences. That is to say, while the universal literary history provides an abstract, overarching sense of Jain literature, the localized literary history opens a window onto a specific literary collection that has been conditioned by its location, era, and religious affiliation. In the case of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār, the library originated as a Digambara temple archive and has later come to be housed in an institute run by a Digambara trust. Its contents are accordingly affected by Digambara sectarian preferences. Geographically, its locality was first in Āmer and later in neighboring Jaipur. As for temporality, the collection probably began in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, with a few older manuscripts having been included in the archive from elsewhere, and was subsequently greatly enriched when it came into the care of Bhaṭṭāraka Devendrakīrti and his successors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The specificity of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār is of some consequence. For example, it was noted above that Hemacandra's famous story "Lives of the Sixty-Three Illustrious Men" (Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacaritra) is not found in the library, perhaps because the author belonged to the Śvetāmbara sect. The story is though present in its earlier Digambara version, namely Jinasena's and Guṇabhadra's Mahāpurāṇa. Nonetheless, other texts by Hemacandra are found in the first three genre categories of the collection, such as his Nemināthacaritra, Śrutaskandha, Pramāṇamīmāṃsā, and Ananyayogavyavaccheda. Yet, it is noticeable that another of Hemacandra's most celebrated works, viz. his Yogaśāstra, also is absent. The Digambara author Śubhacandra's equally extensive yoga-manual entitled Jñānārṇava, which served as a major tacit source for Hemacandra's composition, is though attested in several copies.
A similar sectarian selectiveness applies to another of the most applauded Śvetāmbara authors, Haribhadra. Only two of his writings are found in the first three genre categories of the archive, namely the Nyāyāvatāravṛtti and the Ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya. His many other important treatises on Jain philosophy and doctrine are absent. Such omission might come as a surprise to a student of Jain literature relying on Mālvaṇiyā and Soni's (2007) Jain Philosophy (Part I), which devotes a great many pages to Haribhadra's oeuvre, thereby perhaps suggesting that the author was important to all Jains. Hence, it follows that the broadness of the universal literary history abstracts from the narrowness of historic reality.
Even more striking is the complete nonappearance of Jain canonical scriptures in the bhaṇḍār. Most literary histories of Jainism, such as Winternitz (1920) or Jagdīś Candra Jain (2004), have placed vivid focus on the Āgamic sacred writings of the Siddhānta canon. As a library belonging to the Digambara sect, which does not recognize the authenticity of the Jain canonical Āgama texts transmitted by the rival Śvetāmbara sect, it is perhaps not unexpected that the collection gives no place to those scriptures. However, as noted by Upādhye (1975: 25-27) and J.C. Jain (2004: 96f.), the Digambaras also possess some canonical Siddhānta works, namely the 23 volumes of the Chakkhaṇḍāgama and the Kaṣāyapāhuḍa, though neither of these scriptures is found in the library. It therefore seems that the Bhaṭṭāraka clerics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who compiled the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār based their reading of Jainism exclusively on later commentarial and doctrinal literature without caring much for notions of authority ascribed to canon and scripture.
Aside from such factional features, it is also evident that regionality played a certain role in the library's composition, since the archive contains many works composed by local scholars. Chiefly, the local Rajasthani writer Bhaṭṭāraka Sakalakīrti (born 1386) is represented with at least ten works containing stories and two disciplinary texts. His biography written by his student Sāmal is likewise found in the library. Two later Bhaṭṭārakas of local nascence are Śubhacandra and Jñānabhūṣaṇa, whose authorships respectively include thirty narrative texts and two works on conduct which also are well-represented in the holdings. While the universal literary history disregards such local writers unless they are of national importance, the localized literary history is able to highlight these authors as being particularly important for their contributions to the local heritage.
From Local Literature to Local History to Cultural Heritage
Localized literary history opens up vistas for further study that are not made possible by the universal literary history. Knowledge of local text production and collection enables a move from local text to local community, where the localized literary history becomes a possible approach to local history.[55] The movement unfolds in two parallel pursuits of historical inquiry.
The first pursuit of inquiry is the provenance study of individual books and manuscripts belonging to the library at hand. In the field of library science, provenance study means the tracing and identification of the ownership-history of a particular copy of a book or manuscript, thereby shedding light on the intellectual history of which the book is part. It also includes the study of how a given owner interacted with the book copy or manuscript, e.g., by adding marginalia notes or modifying the volume in other ways. In recent decades, provenance study has become an important subfield in archival history.[56] As David Pearson (1994: 2f.) remarks:
"The study of provenance allows us to assess the size and contents of particular libraries, and to compare them with other collections of their time. It allows us to build up wider pictures of the patterns of book ownership through the centuries, and to see how those patterns change in terms of size, composition, language, subject, or origin. These observations lead on to yield information about the history of the book trade, and about the importance of books in society. The study of an individual private library shows up the interests and tastes of the owner, and the texts which may have influenced his thinking. If he annotated his books, his comments may be valuable as evidence of contemporary reaction to the ideas they contain. An examination of a large number of libraries of one period may show which books were popular and which were not, cutting through the distorting veil of several centuries of changing fashion. Ownership evidence may also play an important part in assigning dates to undated books, or in helping to localise and date bindings."
Pearson thus outlines the many insights that are obtainable through provenance studies and goes on in the remainder of his handbook to provide a practical manual for the study of the provenance of books in Britain from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
It should, however, be stressed that the provenance study of Indian granthabhaṇḍārs has more in common with the study of medieval European libraries than with research on European books produced after the introduction of printing in the fifteenth century. This is due to the fact that book printing was introduced relatively late in India, particularly with regard to printing in Indian scripts, and the use of handwritten manuscripts therefore remained widespread well into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as for example evidenced by the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār. Consequently, the identification of bookplates and binding stamps, which are some of the key techniques in European provenance studies of printed books, does not apply to the analysis of Indian manuscripts that are unbound, looseleaf, handwritten texts. Instead, Indian manuscripts sometimes contain colophons at the end of the text indicating provenance in the form of the names of the author, copyist, sponsor, and owner.[57] While provenance studies of Indian manuscripts prove more complex than the study of European printed books given their lack of identifiable standard features such as stamps, characteristic features of bookbinding, and so forth, the uniqueness of the Indian handwritten manuscript has considerable advantage over the printed book as a source for historical information. No two handwritten manuscripts are completely alike and the widespread use of handwritten copying in India long after this craft had disappeared in Europe provides the Indian historian with an incredible richness of source materials for uncovering truly local intellectual histories of the texts and manuscripts. This especially applies to the Jain manuscript libraries of Jaipur, where the individual collections mostly remain in their original locations in temples of the eighteenth century. The fact that these archives have so far avoided the fate of being collected into a single, large, central state library or the like, with the possible loss of their individual character and history that such a move potentially involves, means that the historian still has the possibility of seeing each collection in its original setting as part of the given temple's unique history.
The second pursuit of inquiry is the historical study of the library's founders and caretakers over the centuries in order to highlight the archive's historical role in the intellectual and religious life of the community to which it belongs. In the case of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār, such inquiry particularly pertains to the life and activities of the bhaṭṭāraka clerics who elevated the collection into a broader repository of Jain literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, particularly Bhaṭṭāraka Devendrakīrti and his successors. The role of the bhaṭṭāraka priests in the Digambara tradition from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries still remains a highly understudied topic. The library contains a large number of manuscripts that are specified in their colophons as having been copied by Devendrakīrti or other local bhaṭṭārakas, and a few texts are even said to have been composed or compiled by them. The list of known paṇḍitas who were involved in the founding and upkeep of the Jain manuscript libraries of Jaipur is long and impressive. Kāslīvāl (1967: 43), who himself was a descendant of the Kāslīvāl line of such scholars, lists no less than fifteen local intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Pāṇḍyā Lūṇakaraṇ, Daulat Rām Kāslīvāl, Ṭoḍar Mal (c.1720-1767),[58] his son Gumānī Rām, Ṭek Cand, Dīpcand Kāslīvāl, Jaicand Chābrā, Ḍalu Rām, Mannā Lāl Pātnī, Kesari Siṅgh, Svarūp Cand Bilālā, Sadāsukh Kāslīvāl, Bābā Dūlīcand Pārasdās Nigotyā, Jait Rām, and Pannā Lāl Chaudhary. The methods of localized literary history and provenance study devoted to the manuscripts associated with these persons of letters may not only reveal the particular literary tastes of each intellectual but may also uncover a great deal about the ritual, legal, and sermonizing roles these scholars played in the local histories of Āmer and Jaipur. Moreover, several of the libraries belong to temples that were founded by important Jain sponsors who during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries served as prime ministers (devān) to the local Jaipuri kings. They include such luminaries as Badhī Cand, Śiv Lāl, Devān Amarcand, and Jhūnthā Rām Saṅghī (Kāslīvāl, 1967: 44-60). A study of the libraries that these Jain politicians endowed is therefore also a study of the temples and their benefactors, which is of consequence for understanding the local political history in Mughal and colonial India.
As exquisitely recognized by Upādhye (1975: 40-52), Jain literature constitutes a unique and rich form of Indian heritage. To this should here be added that there exists a certain complementarity between history and cultural heritage. History, on the one hand, is a movement from the present to the past, with the creation of historiographical narratives about the past on the basis of present sources, such as the sub-texts of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār. Cultural heritage, on the other hand, is a movement from the past to the present, involving the use of historical narratives about the past to construct present identities.[59] When history approaches the past through a universal notion of its sources, namely in the form of 'literature' viewing it as what I call epi-text, meaning "that which stands above the text" , it creates a top-down narrative that leads to the formation of a Platonic idealized (sāmānya) construct of cultural heritage, e.g., the universalized national identity 'Indian', the regional identity 'Rajasthani', or the religious identity 'Jain'. When, however, history approaches the past through a localized notion of the source as sub-text, i.e., as 'manuscript' or 'document', it creates a bottom-up narrative that leads to the formation of an Aristotelian particularized (viśeṣa) construct of cultural heritage associated with relativized, local identities of communities and individuals.
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© The Editor. International Journal of Jaina Studies 2013
It should be noted that the two expressions 'history of literature' and 'literary history' are in this article used interchangeably and are not distinguished as separate technical terms. Other writers, including Sivathamby 1986 and Emmrich 2011: 602, have previously suggested distinguishing the two terms as referring respectively to 'a history only of texts' and 'a history of the social events, agents, and circumstances as analyzed on the basis of texts'. Nonetheless, the reason for not adopting such a distinction here is that a history only of texts must equally be seen as being a historicist construal that in its nature as a historiographical narrative is no different from a social history based on texts, and there is consequently no theoretical foundation for making the distinction. The only difference between the two is the extent to which the notion of social history that underpins the historical narrative is being made explicit or not.
On these and other Jain texts as 'universal histories', see Cort 1995b: 474-80 and Flügel 2010: 360 fn. 11.
Cf. in this context the more secular but smaller-scoped universal history by G.F.W. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte: Berlin 1822/1823, published in 1837.
The author is indebted to the scholarly community of the Indology List (http://indology.info/), particularly to Peter Wyzlic and Klaus Karttunen, for advice on identifying the earliest histories of Indian literature. For a survey study of the literary histories of India, see also the volume edited by Pollock 2003.
Concerning the transliteration of Indian words here and below, diacritical signs have generally been applied to words in Sanskrit, Prākṛt, Hindi, and other Indian languages. However, diacritical signs have not been adopted in proper nouns that are common in English, such as 'Hindi' or 'Rajasthan'.
A revised and enlarged version of this work appeared with a third volume in 1870-1871. Ten years prior to de Tassy's work, K.V. Ramaswami had in 1829 published a smaller study of South Indian poets entitled Biographical Sketches of the Dekkan Poets, containing brief descriptions of roughly a hundred authors. Ramaswami's book has been discussed by Frese 2011: 84-88.
When mentioning religious narratives, it should though be added that the modernist literary history, similar to the classicist history (to be discussed below), also has struggled with what Tschacher 2011: 52a called 'politics of inclusion', where the literature of religious minorities has tended to be excluded. See the discussions on Indian Islamic writings in Tschacher 2011 and de Bruijn 2011, and on Tamil Jain literature in Emmrich 2011.
For a critical discussion of literary history and nationalist ideology, see the volume edited by Harder 2011, especially Harder's 2011: 1-18 introduction.
The publications by August Hennings 1786, "Versuch einer ostindischen Literatur-Geschichte," and William Ward 1817, A View of the History, Literature, and Religion of the Hindoos, have been excluded from the present discussion, since they cannot be regarded as histories of Indian literature per se. The former is an account of what European visitors had had to say about East India, while the latter primarily is a survey of Hindu religious beliefs and practices.
The author wishes to thank the members of the Indology List, particularly Klaus Karttunen, Peter Wyzlic, Petteri Koskikallio, Himal Trikha, Paul Dundas, and Christian P. Haskett, for advice on identifying literary histories of Jainism.
Mention may also be made here of the Jaina Granthāvalī likewise published in 1909 by the Jain Śvetāmbara Conference in Bombay. This publication is a general list of some 3200 Jain works and 723 authors, which became an important reference work for the subsequent historiography of Jain literature. It was based in part on the Bṛhaṭṭippanikā, a bibliographical list of Jain works compiled by an anonymous author in 1500 CE; see Kātre, 1962: 415. Another important bibliographical reference work is the extensive list of Jain works and authors compiled by Hari Dāmodar Velaṇkar in his Jinaratnakośa 1944. Finally, mention should be made of the incomplete and unpublished Jaina-Onomasticon by Johannes Emil Klatt (1852-1908), a 4132-page-long anthology of proper names and biographies of Jaina authors, texts, and place names with explanatory historical notes (Flügel 2011). There is currently a project underway at SOAS, headed by Peter Flügel, to publish Klatt's work; see http://www.soas.ac.uk/news/newsitem79044.html.
Aside from the literary histories of Jainism listed here, a few other literary studies - though not literary histories as such merit attention for their contributions to the study of Jain literature in general. One is Premī's 1942, revised edition 1956 Jain Sāhitya aur Itihās, being a collection of 42 articles covering various aspects of Jain literature. Another is Sāṇḍesarā's 1953 detailed study of the thirteenth-century Gujarati ruler Mahāmātya Vastupāla, the more than fifteen Jain authors patronized by him, and their influence on Sanskrit literature. A third is Gode's 1953 Studies in Indian Literary History, the first volume of which contains sixteen articles (pp. 1-102) examining select topics concerning Jain authors and manuscripts. Further pertinent publications are Kulkarni 1990 and 2001, Vrat 1994, and Koṭhārī 2001.
For literary histories of the Jain canon aside from the early survey works already mentioned, see Schubring 1935: 52-84 (for a survey of translations of later Jain literature, see also pp. 207-224), Kāpaḍiyā 1941, and Chanchreek & Jain 2004.
For treatments and surveys of Jain philosophical literature, see Dixit 1971 as well as Mālvaṇiyā & Soni's 2007 volume in Potter's Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies series. Two further volumes (vols. 14 and 27) on Jain philosophy to be edited by Potter and Balcerowicz are currently scheduled to appear in the latter series published by Motilal Banarsidas Publishers.
The Jain Prākṛt literary history has been treated by J.C. Jain 1961 and 2004, Tomar 1964, Kātre 1964, and Upādhye 1975. For a study of major themes in Prākṛt narrative literature, see additionally J.C. Jain 1971, 1981, and 1994.
For literary histories of Jain Apabhraṃśa works, see Kochar 1956, Tomar 1964, D.K. Jain 1965, D.K. Śāstrī 1972, and Bhāyāṇī 1989.
The Jain literature in Tamil has been surveyed by Cakkaravartti 1941/1974. For a discussion of this work, see Emmrich 2011: 623-42.
For literary histories of Jain Gujarati poets and literature, see Vyās 1913, Deśāī 1926-1931, and Koṭhārī & Shah 1993. Deśāī's work in two volumes was since republished in a greatly enlarged edition in ten volumes by Koṭhārī; see Deśāī & Koṭhārī 1986-1997.
The word 'communalist' should here be understood in its negative connotation, in the manner in which the
term has been employed in India since the 1940s and '50s, denoting the promotion of narrow interests of
specific castes, ethnic groups, or religious communities over the common interests of society at large, often leading to social strife and violence.
In his excellent discussion of the universal histories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the philosopher Louis O. Mink 1978: 139 has argued that universal history is the exact opposite of nationalist history, because its scope is not national but global and because the genre of universal history ended with the rise of nationalist histories in the mid-nineteenth century. It may therefore seem strange that it is here claimed that universalist discourse gives rise to centralized abstractions, such as that of nationalism. The reason for this difference is, however, merely a matter of definition. Mink employs the word 'universal' in the sense of 'global' as opposed to 'national', i.e., the writing of a world history, whereas 'universalist' is here used in the broader and more fundamental sense of a discourse that takes its outset in a 'universal', i.e., a generality (sāmānya) of any kind, including the generality of the 'nation' as seen in the notion of a 'national literature'.
In the context of Jainism, it may be worth mentioning that the term 'localized history' has previously been employed by Cort 1995b: 473 to characterize Jain primary sources that deal with Jain histories of specific sects, places, or persons and which in that sense are 'local'. The present usage of the expression 'localized literary history' should, however, not be confused with Cort's term. 'Localized literary history' designates a method for writing literary history, whereas Cort's term is used to classify a particular type of primary source.
Valdés has since implemented his proposed method in a monumental three-volume work on the literary cultures of Latin America co-edited with Kadir 2004.
It should be added as already observed by the French nineteenth-century historian Jules Michelet that not all literature promotes national unity, since literature ideally may become a form of social criticism; see Williams 1987: 18. It consequently follows that not all literary history serves a nationalist agenda, if it chooses to emphasize such literature. Analogously, there is the issue of minority literature that at times may consciously strive to set itself apart from the cultural heritage of the majority, e.g., in Tamil Muslim authors' use of an Arabicized form of Tamil language that is highly difficult to read for non-Muslim Tamils; see Tshacher 2011: 71-77. A literary history treating such literature may or may not choose to render it part of larger narrative of nationalist unity.
To be fair, it should be noted that Valdés does not see his own approach in this manner. Instead, Valdés 2002: 100 considers his proposal for a Latin American literary history to be "a history of pluralities joined together under the perennially contested designation of Latin America," with the idea of constructing "a history without closure."
The term 'sub-text', along with the accompanying notions of 'epi-text' and 'hyper-text', are introduced and discussed as part of a larger theory of text-based history called 'textory'; see Kragh 2013. In view of this, the present article is an investigation of how to apply the notion of sub-text to a concrete case-study and the ramifications this has for the discipline of literary criticism.
In his survey of the Jain granthabhaṇḍārs of Rajasthan, Kāslīvāl 1967: 41-43, 100-102 stresses the libraries of Jaipur as well as those of Jaisalmer in Western Rajasthan as being particularly large and significant. The collections of Jaisalmer have earlier been examined by Bhāṇḍārkar 1907 and Jambūvijay 2000. For a notice of a project to survey, catalog, and digitize Jain libraries in north-eastern India, see A.K. Jain 2006. On the earlier excursions by Bühler and Jacobi in 1873-74 to survey the manuscript collections of Jaisalmer, see Flügel 1999.
For a brief history of the rulers of Āmer and Jaipur and their patronage of literature, see Bahura 1976: 1-120 and Roy 1978, who also discusses the history of the Jains in Jaipur on pp. 180-191.
Information according to Mr. Vipin Kumar Baj of the Digambar Jain Mandir Saṅghījī and secretary of the Jaipur Saṅgh council, interview April 2011. Mr. Baj is currently completing a digital catalog of all the Jain manuscript collections in Jaipur based on a new survey of the current holdings of each library.
While Jaipur is the center for the Digambara sect in Rajasthan, Śvetāmbara strongholds in the state with only little Digambara presence include the cities of Bikaner and Jaisalmer. Jodhpur is a stronghold of the Sthānakavāsī sub-sect of the Śvetāmbara tradition. For a general description of the modern Jain libraries and old granthabhaṇḍārs of Jodhpur, see Sancheti 2007.
Nos. 2 and 3 are both located in the Baḍa Mandir, a temple belonging to the Terāpanthī subsect of the Digambara.
See the remarks on the Bhaṭṭārakjī Nasiyāṃ in Cort 2002: 59. Concerning the location of Jain temples in Jaipur, see Asher 2003: 363ff.
Information according to a Hindi inscription tablet posted at the memorial. Cf. Johrāpūrkar 1958: 112-113.
Concerning the parallel Śvetāmbara tradition of yatis, meaning "striver, ascetic," see Cort 1991: 657-61 and 1995a: 86.
For a study of the bhaṭṭāraka tradition, see Johrāpūrkar 1958 and Flügel 2006: 344-47. For a history of the bhaṭṭarākas of Jaipur, see Cort 2002: 50-62.
The regional vernaculars are here listed as stated in the handlist (granthasūci) of the Āmer Śāstrabhaṇḍār. Some manuscripts contain more than one language, in which case the manuscript has here been reckoned only according to the first and foremost language mentioned in the handlist. For example, a Prākṛt manuscript including a Hindi translation or glossary has been counted only as a Prākṛt manuscript.
By only discussing the stories that are represented by several manuscripts, the emphasis in the following discussion is on the popularity of certain works as reflected in the library. It should, however, be underlined that such an approach does not direct attention to very rare works, which may only be represented by a single manuscript. For a full overview of the collection, the catalog of Kāslīvāl 1949 may be consulted. Some of the stories mentioned here have been summarized by Warder 1972-1992.
For the various works on the conduct of lay-practitioners (śrāvakācāra) mentioned here and below, the survey study by Williams 1963 may be consulted
The percentages are calculated according to the total number of manuscripts found in the three surveyed genres only, i.e., 1848 manuscripts, and not according to the overall number of manuscripts in the entire library.
Concerning Jain texts that function as local histories, see Cort 1995b: 480-90. For a methodological discussion of relying on manuscript catalogs for the writing of local histories, see Zysk 2012.
See Mandelbrote & Taylor 2009, especially the essay by Pearson, ibid., 1-7. For theoretical discussion of 'text' as a physical object in the sense of 'book', see Lock 2010.