Walther Schubring's work translated here from the German is a highly scholarly piece of work in the field of Jaina studies. This is clearly evident from the very title: Worte Mahaviras, Kritische Ubersetzungen aus dem Kanon der Jaina ("Mahavira's Words. Critical Translations from the Canon of the Jainas"), Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1926. In it Schubring strives to be as faithful to the original texts as a translation possibly can be. He translates the texts as they are, with any insertion being clearly marked [in brackets], including the simple addition of a verb "to be" which is commonly left out in Prakrit and Sanskrit.
The original intention was to do a 'simple English translation of the work and, by and large, to try and be as sincere to Schubring as he was to the texts he translated. However, any work such as this cannot ignore the fact that not only does a 1926 publication (still available today!) have to be brought up to date in many respects (e.g., with regard to references, bibliography, etc.), but also that the translation should in some way take cognizance of relevant work done in the field of Jaina studies. Without the spontaneous help of Professor Willem Bollee particularly in this regard, the intended 'simple' translation would hardly have been useful. Thanks to Prof. Bollee's expert involvement the translation has been raised to a level that can truly be termed academic, in keeping with Schubring's original scholarship. Prof. Bollee not only improved several expressions, but added his vast knowledge to the basic translation I had done. This will be evident from the numerous additions made within angle brackets (..). including the footnotes which have been added in the same way: (fn.no.), and often acknowledging him in the form: (WB). This is in addition to Appendix 4 with Prof. Bollee's additions to footnotes, intended especially for the longer footnotes and other relevant information. In other words, it is befitting that the work now appears with two translators.
We tried to retain Schubring's form of presentation in most cases. Some differences and noteworthy points in this context are: 1. apart from the overview of the canon in Schubring's foreword all text titles have been given in italics (and not only the group names of texts such as Anga, Uvanga, etc.), 2. the footnotes are supplied in sequence for each chapter (or several chapters together), as against Schubring's numbering per page, 3. in a few cases a new para-graph seemed necessary (eg, on Schubring's p. 18); 4. all insertions by the translators have been done using angle brackets (...) (including Schubring's page numbers), in order not to confuse these with Schubring's own insertions in square brackets [...]; 5. as already said, foot-notes that have such angle brackets (e.g.,), are thanks to Professor Bollée's added contribution; 6. in a few selected cases some of Schubring's footnotes have been integrated into the text, especially where just one word is given in the footnote; 7. for practical purposes a footnote has often been repeated in full, instead of merely giving the reference to it; 8. Schubring has spaced the letters of some words in order to highlight them as being important for a section or chapter, this too has been done here.
In his other renowned work Lehre der Jainas (p. 26, fn. 7), published later in 1935, Schubring makes a correction which has been included here, on p. 26, and indicated it by double-underlining it. Professor Bollee had discovered this. Further, Professor Bollee is in possession of Schubring's valuable personal copy of the book translated here in which Schubring made several changes, corrections and/or additions in pencil. These we have indicated here also by double-underlining them, in many cases by adding: "Schubring's personal copy". (The corrigenda on p. x of the German original have been silently included here.) Some changes have also been taken over from Leumann's review of Schubring's book. Schubring adopted these in his personal copy and they have been included here (see the English translation of Leumann's review in Appendix 2).
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