Bhagchandra Jain

Last updated

Bhagchandra (Bhaskar) Jain (born on 11 September 1936) is an Indian scholar, renowned for his knowledge of Jainism and Buddhism, and of classical Indian languages including Pali and Sanskrit. His career has spanned more than five decades. He is the recipient of the 2004 "Presidential Award" for his contribution to Pali-Prakrit languages and Buddhism & Jainism religions.

Bhagchandraji received his Ph.D. from Vidyodaya (University of Ceylon) in 1966. His dissertation was later published as Jainism in Buddhist Literature [1] in 1972, which has since emerged as a major reference on the topic.

He was Head of Department of Pali and Prakrit at Nagpur University [2] from 1965 to 1996, and he served as the director of Parshvanath Vidyapith at Varanasi from 1999 to 2001. He is currently working as a Professor Emeritus in JAIN Vishwabharti (Deemed University), Ladnun in Rajasthan. Previously, he worked at JRRS University, Jaipur as Professor & Head of Jain Philosophy as well.

Mr. Bhagchandra Jain’s scholarly contributions include more than 60 books and 300 research papers, and he has been a visiting Professor at universities in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He is a recipient of three Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.) degrees viz. D.Litt. (Sanskrit), D.Litt. (Pali – Prakrit) and D.Litt. (Hindi) which has not been achieved by anyone else in the world and is a world record. In addition, he is a holder of M.A. (Ancient Indian History, Culture, and Archaeology), M.A. (Pali), and M.A. (Sanskrit, Shastracharya (Prakrit and Jain Darshan), Acharya (Sanskrit Sahitya)). Bhagchandra has received several awards and honors, including the Presidential Certificate of Honour in Pali/Prakrit in 2004.

Mr. Bhagchandra Jain served as an editor of several periodicals including Jain Milan, Ratnatraya, Suddharma, Shramana, Nagpur University Journal, and Prachin Tirth Jirnoddhar; and has represented Jainism, Buddhism and Indology at World Religious Conferences (including Harvard University) and chaired the sessions in the U.S., U.K., Canada and European countries.

He is married to Dr. Pushpalata Jain, former Head of the Department of Hindi at St. Francis de Sales College, Nagpur.

Related Research Articles

Prakrit Group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages of the 3rd century BCE – 8th century CE

The Prakrits are a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Indo-Aryan languages, excluding earlier inscriptions and the later Pali.

Pali is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Pāli Canon or Tipiṭaka as well as the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism. In early time, it was written in Brahmi script.

Magadha Kingdom in ancient India

Magadha was a region and one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas, 'Great Kingdoms' of the Second Urbanization in what is now south Bihar at the eastern Ganges Plain. Magadha was ruled by Brihadratha dynasty, Pradyota dynasty, Haryanka dynasty, and the Shaishunaga dynasty. Villages had their own assemblies under their local chiefs called Gramakas. Their administrations were divided into executive, judicial, and military functions.

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) is a modern linguistic category applied to the language used in a class of Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. BHS is classified as a Middle Indo-Aryan language. It is sometimes called "Buddhist Sanskrit" or "Mixed Sanskrit".

Hazari Prasad Dwivedi Hindi novelist and scholar (1907–1979)

Hazari Prasad Dwivedi was a Hindi novelist, literary historian, essayist, critic and scholar. He penned numerous novels, collections of essays, historical research on medieval religious movements of India especially Kabir and Natha Sampradaya, and historical outlines of Hindi literature.

K. Sri Dhammananda

K. Sri Dhammananda was a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and scholar.

Gāthā is a Sanskrit term for 'song' or 'verse', especially referring to any poetic metre which is used in legends, and is not part of the Vedas but peculiar to either Epic Sanskrit or to Prakrit. The word is originally derived from the Sanskrit/Prakrit root gai, which means 'to speak, sing, recite or extol', cognate to the Avestan term gatha.

Rahul Sankrityayan Indian scholar and author (1893–1963)

Rahul Sankrityayan was an Indian independence activist, writer and a polyglot who wrote in Hindi. He played a pivotal role in giving travelogue a 'literary form'. He was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India, spending forty-five years of his life on travels away from his home. Sankrityayan is often called the "father of Indian travelogue".

Magadhi Prakrit (Māgadhī) is of one of the three Dramatic Prakrits, the written languages of Ancient India following the decline of Pali and Sanskrit. It was a vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan language, replacing earlier Vedic Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was spoken in the eastern Indian subcontinent, in a region spanning what is now eastern India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Associated with the ancient Magadha, it was spoken in present-day Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and eastern Uttar Pradesh under various apabhramsa dialects, and used in some dramas to represent vernacular dialogue in Prakrit dramas. It is believed to be the language spoken by the important religious figures Gautama Buddha and Mahavira and was also the language of the courts of the Magadha mahajanapada and the Maurya Empire; some of the Edicts of Ashoka were composed in it.

Richard Francis Gombrich is a British Indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli, and Buddhist studies. He was the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1976 to 2004. He is currently Founder-President of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. He is a past president of the Pali Text Society (1994–2002) and general editor emeritus of the Clay Sanskrit Library.

K. R. Norman British philologist

Kenneth Roy Norman FBA (1925–2020) was a British philologist. He was Professor Emeritus of Indian Studies at the University of Cambridge, and was a leading authority on Pali and other Middle Indo-Aryan languages.

David J. Kalupahana (1936–2014) was a Buddhist scholar from Sri Lanka. He was a student of the late K.N. Jayatilleke, who was a student of Wittgenstein. He wrote mainly about epistemology, theory of language, and compared later Buddhist philosophical texts against the earliest texts and tried to present interpretations that were both historically contextualised and also compatible with the earliest texts, and in doing so, he encouraged Theravada Buddhists and scholars to reevaluate the legitimacy of later, Mahayana texts and consider them more sympathetically.

The Mahāvastu is a text of the Lokottaravāda school of Early Buddhism. It describes itself as being a historical preface to the Buddhist monastic codes (vinaya). Over half of the text is composed of Jātaka and Avadāna tales, accounts of the earlier lives of the Buddha and other bodhisattvas.

Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi Indian writer and scholar (1893–1985)

Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi (1893–1985) was a Sanskrit scholar and a prominent Indologist of the 20th century who hailed from Maharashtra, India. He was an expert of his times on stone and copper inscriptions and the coinage of ancient India. For his contributions to Indian history he was honoured with the title Mahamahopadhyaya by the British Indian Government in 1941. He was also awarded Padma Bhushan in 1975 by the President of India.

Sukhlal Sanghvi

Sukhlal Sanghvi, also known as Pandit Sukhlalji, was a Jain scholar and philosopher. He belonged to the Sthanakvasi sect of Jainism. Pandit Sukhlal lost his eyesight at the age of sixteen on account of smallpox. However, he persisted and became profoundly versed in Jain logic and rose to become a professor at Banaras Hindu University. Paul Dundas calls him one of the most incisive modern interpreters of Jain philosophy. Dundas notes that Sanghavi represents what now seems to be a virtually lost scholarly and intellectual world. He was a mentor for famous Jain scholar Padmanabh Jaini. During his lifetime he won such awards as the Sahitya Akademi Award and won recognition from the Government of India by getting Padma Bhushan award. Sukhlalji was also known as Pragnachaksu because he was so vastly learned despite being visually disabled.

Nalini Balbir is a French Indologist who lives in Paris. She is a scholar of Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. She was a direct student of Indologist Colette Caillat. She is known for her work on the publication of the Catalogue of the Jain Manuscripts of the British Library published by the Institute of Jainology.

Padmanabh Jaini

Padmanabh Shrivarma Jaini was an Indian born scholar of Jainism and Buddhism, living in Berkeley, California, United States. He was from a Digambar Jain family; however he was equally familiar with both the Digambara and Svetambara forms of Jainism. He has taught at the Banaras Hindu University, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and at the University of California at Berkeley, from which he retired in 1994. Professor Jaini was the author of several books and papers. His best known work is The Jaina Path of Purification (1979). Some of his major articles have been published under these titles: The Collected Papers on Jaina Studies (2000) and Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies (2001). He died on 25 May 2021 at Berkeley at age 97.

Benimadhab Barua

Benimadhab Barua was an Indian scholar of ancient Indian languages, Buddhism and law. He was a prominent educationist and writer.

Vidyadhar Pasusa Johrapurkar is a Sanskritist, social anthropologist and historian. His name is sometimes spelt as Vidyadhar Pasusa Joharapurkar. He specializes in Jainism and Jain philosophy.

Rahas Bihari Dwivedi is a Sanskrit scholar and poet from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. He was awarded the President's Ceritificate of Honour for Sanskrit in the year 2012. He was the formerly the Head of the Department of Sanskrit at Rani Durgavati University, Jabalpur.

References

  1. Bhagchandra Jain, Jainism in Buddhist Literature. Ph.D. Thesis, U. of Ceylon 1966. Published Nagpur 1972
  2. Davids, T. W. Rhys; Cowell, George; Takakusu, J.; Müller, F. Max (1980). Sacred Books of the East. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. v. ISBN   81-208-1096-1.