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which Jaina texts are early Jalna texts is faulty inasmuch as they in this connection happen to bracket certain genuinely early texts with certain decidedly late texts. As a result they are forced to explain away those passages of these late texts which incorporate an understanding that is characteristic of late text. Of course, even the late texts which the Shāna. kavāsins treat as early are not very late but they are certainly late; and hence the anomaly we have noted.
To our mind the only early Jaina texts available to us today are the texts examined in the following pages. True, even these texts contain more or less considerable material that is a later interpolation but there is little early material that is to be found outside these texts; and that is our point,
For the rest let these pages speak for themselves.
12-12-77 Ajoy Bhavan New Delhi
K. K. Dixit
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