Worterbuch des kanonischen Jinismus.

• Author: Dundas, Paul
• Position: Book review

Worterbuch des kanonischen Jinismus. By KLAUS MYLIUS. Beitrage zur Kenntnis sudasiatischer Sprachen und Literaturen. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2005. Pp. vii + 203.

Students seeking basic guidance on the complex terminology employed within the Svetambara Jain agama have usually had to rely on meager glossaries in European-language textbooks, while those at a more advanced stage must, if able to read Hindi, consult one of the voluminous, although not always user-friendly Indian reference works such as the Jaina Laksanavali or, more recently, the word lists and encyclopedias published by the Terapanthi sect from their center in Laduum. This is hardly a satisfactory situation, particularly for western students approaching the Jain scriptural tradition from a religious studies background, and those familiar with German (a language that has a special position in the study of Jainism) will accordingly welcome Klaus Mylius's dictionary of 2611 terms and proper names culled from the Ardhamagadhi canon.

Mylius acknowledges the awkwardness of his task owing to the lack of a fully critical edition of the agama, and it might be further suggested that to introduce his dictionary with little more than a paragraph of historical contextualization, a selective list of editions, translations, and studies, and an exiguous bibliography of secondary literature (which, among other significant English language work, omits Kendall W. Folkert's Scripture and Community: Collected Essays on the Jains and misspells the name of the distinguished scholar of early Jainism K. K. Dixit as "Dikshit") is not entirely sufficient for the needs of its presumed target audience. The listing of the most well-known Indian editions will certainly be helpful for scholars who can benefit from consulting them, although it is curious that the versions of the Agamodaya Samiti and Jaina Agama Series of the latish prakirnaka text, the Ganivijja, are mentioned and not that of Schubring, which also comes with a German translation and is easily accessible in that scholar's Kleine Schriften.

Mylius's method is to cite an Ardhamagadhi form followed by its Sanskrit equivalent, then provide a definition and references in abbreviated form to the texts in which the term is found without any precise citation. This procedure is no doubt dictated by sound practical reasons, but it does have the undesirable effect of potentially promoting a...