The Doctrine of the Jainas, Described after the Old Sources c5.15

c5.15

§ 2. The mentioned edition had been WEBER'S first attempt in Jain research, but years later it was actually his great study "Über ein Fragment der Bhagavatī etc." that was epoch-making. It appeared in two parts in the Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 1865-66 and in a separate edition (1866-67), that is to say again twenty years after the first Jain text (s.a.). Obsolete as it is now, yet it marks in our field the beginning of a philological and creative epoch. As to it, the reader may be referred to WINDISCH'S precise description rendered in the Grundriss (Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research). But the fundaments laid down by WEBER in self-sacrificing zeal cannot be passed over here: his treatise "Über die heiligen Schriften der Jaina" in Indische Studien Vol. 16 and 17 (1883-85) based upon the Jain manuscripts acquired by the Royal Library of Berlin 1873-78, and his "Verzeichnis" of the same (1888-92), the latter⁶ represented by two monumental volumes, being a most accurate description which even extends to literature and history. A work of that scope going beyond the usual limits of a catalogue was not out of place at that stage. The Jain manuscripts purchased in later years have been catalogued by the AUTHOR not earlier than in 1944¹.