Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c14.5

v1.c14.5

² Some copies of these Jain MSS. from Jaisalmer, which were written from five to eight centuries back, I presented to the Royal Asiatic Society. Of the vast numbers of these MS. books in the libraries of Patan and Jaisalmer, many are of the most remote antiquity, and in a character no longer understood by their possessors, or only by the supreme pontiff and his initiated librarians. There is one volume held so sacred for its magical contents, that it is suspended by a chain in the temple of Chintaman, at the last-named capital in the desert, and is only taken down to have its covering renewed, or at the inauguration of a pontiff. Tradition assigns its authorship to Somaditya Suru Acharya, a pontiff of past days, before the Islamite had crossed the waters of the Indus, and whose diocese extended far beyond that stream. His magic mantle is also here preserved, and used on every new installation. The character is, doubtless, the nail-headed Pali; and could we introduce the ingenious, indefatigable, and modest Mons. E. Burnouf, with his able coadjutor Dr. Lassen, into the temple, we might learn something of this Sibylline volume, without their incurring the risk of loss of sight, which befel the last individual, a female Yati of the Jains, who sacrilegiously endeavoured to acquire its contents. [For the temple library at Jaisalmer see IA, iv. 81 ff; for those at Udaipur, ibid. xiii. 31. J. Burgess visited the Pātan library, described by the Author (WI, 232 ff.), and found a collection of palm-leaf MSS., carefully wrapped in cloth and deposited in large chests (BG, vii. 598).]