Preface (Professor S.A. Jain)

Grateful Word of Appreciation for My Worthy Predecessor—Professor S.A. Jain

In 1960, Professor S.A. Jain (1905-1976) had authored and published “Reality–English Translation of Śrī Pūjyapāda’s Sarvārthasiddhi”, my pride possession since last two decades. It is impossible not to marvel at the enormity of the task that he had taken upon himself; Ācārya Pūjyapāda’s ‘Sarvārthasiddhi’ is an extremely profound Scripture dealing with complex issues, beyond comprehension of the ordinary men. It is mentioned in a later edition^[1] of the book that Professor Jain undertook, to do justice to the task, special training to study Sanskrit under a renowned scholar. He mustered all his energies for nearly 15 years to complete and publish the book. He sent the manuscript to well-known Jain philosophers of the time, including Prof. A. Chakravarthi, Dr. A.N. Upadhye, Dr. Hiralal Jain and Mr. S.C. Diwaker.

Professor Jain avers in his Preface:

“Śrī Pūjyapāda’s Sarvārthasiddhi has exercised a great fascination on my mind ever since I commenced the study of this great work. Very few works of the world’s literature have inspired me to the same extent or have provided equally satisfactory answers to the world’s riddles, which have perplexed the greatest thinkers of all ages. No philosophical work that I know of treats of the great issues that confront humanity with the same simplicity, charm, ease and freedom. I have tried to capture the spirit of the original in thought and expression to the extent it is possible in a translation. It is extremely difficult to convey fully the spirit and charm of Sanskrit in the English language. There are turns of expression and ways of exposition peculiar to Sanskrit, which, in a literal translation into English, would appear mechanical repetition instead of heightening the charm of the work as they do in Sanskrit. I have endeavoured to make my translation a true and faithful rendering into English of the Sanskrit original, without violating the idiom and genius of the English language...”

Having experienced, first-hand, the tediousness of letterpress composing, I cannot but marvel at Professor Jain’s perseverance in faultlessly producing the book not only with original Sanskrit sūtra but also with proper diacritical marks.

I have unashamedly excerpted from Professor Jain’s magnum opus–‘Reality’–while undertaking the present translation. Due to my overwhelming reverence for it, at many places, I had to almost reproduce full sentences from it. I had no choice; pure gold must be retained as it is. Errors committed in improper reproduction are mine; wherever I could improve upon the text, the credit goes to the foundation provided to me by my predecessor.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See the biographical note in the 1990 edition of the book under reference, published by Jwalamalini Trust (Regd.), 8 Venkatarama Iyer Street, Venkatapuram, Ambattur, Madras-600053.