Ancient manuscripts can often reappear in relevance. The art of Jain manuscripts brings back traditions, concepts and artwork from millennia long past. And curiously, these manuscripts were seldom studied until 150 years ago, when they were first translated to the world.
Until then, Jain manuscripts were exclusively read in monasteries. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the work of scholars like James Tod, George Bühler, R.G. Bhandarkar and Peter Peterson. Without the efforts of the Archaeological Survey and prominent Indian and European Orientalists, many priceless Jain texts would have been lost to time.
The rediscovery of Jainism – which had until then been considered a sub-sect of Buddhism by the British – would have many implications. One was the rediscovery of mathematical insight by P.C. Mahalanobis, who in his paper on the ‘Foundations of Statistics‘, identifies an ancient Jain scholar as giving rise to the concept of probability.
In the manuscripts of Bhadrabahu, we find an ancient explanation of probability in the concept of Syādvāda. Mahalanobis has divided it into seven empirical statements:
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