About Getting Back Home
Several avenues open up for anyone keen on diving into the Acharanga Sutra’s original manuscripts or its critical editions. A treasure trove awaits in both physical collections and online repositories.
National and State Libraries in India
• The National Mission for Manuscripts (New Delhi) has helped digitize many Jain works under its e-GRAS initiative.
• State archives, especially in Rajasthan (Bikaner) and Gujarat (Gandhinagar), preserve palm-leaf or birch-bark copies catalogued by the Archaeological Survey of India.University Collections Abroad
• Bodleian Library (Oxford) holds several Jain codices, including a nicely preserved Acharanga in its Special Collections; check the online manuscripts catalogue.
• The British Library’s Oriental Manuscripts section lists multiple Jain items—search “Add MS” numbers to zero in on Jain texts.
• Harvard’s Houghton Library features the Hermann Jacobi edition (Critical Pāli and Prakrit Studies series) and related commentaries.Digital Libraries and Scholarly Portals
• GRETIL (Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Languages) offers critical Sanskrit editions, downloadable in a flash.
• Muktabodha Digital Library hosts high-resolution scans of Jain Agamas, with metadata guiding you straight to the Acharanga.
• The Digital Library of India (now integrated into archive.org) puts many 19th- and early-20th-century print editions at your fingertips.Specialized Jain Repositories
• Jaina Digital Library (jainelibrary.org) curates both manuscript images and modern critical editions, complete with English translations by scholars like Vijay K. Jain.
• The International Digambara Jain Manuscript Catalog (Goa University) lists holdings from private collections and temple libraries—often overlooked gems.Scholarly Editions and Translations
• Hermann Jacobi’s pioneering 1894 edition remains a cornerstone; later critical revisions appear in the Harvard Oriental Series.
• Modern translations by Luis Gonçalves T. and Paul Dundas bring fresh perspectives and extensive footnotes.
Thanks to ongoing efforts under India’s Manuscripts Mission and UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme, access keeps improving. Whether browsing high-resolution scans on a tablet or paging through a rare folio in Oxford, the Acharanga Sutra has never been closer—quite literally in the palm of one’s hand.