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canonical knowledge has often been described as the Eleven Angas & Fourteen Purvas. After Mahavira's nirvana, this body of knowledge flowed down by word of mouth through a succession of eminent Acharyas, dwindling in volume with the passage of time. At last, about the beginning of the Christian era, what remained of the contents of the Purvas was recollected in the form of Mahakarmaprakriti-prabhrata and Kasayaprabhrata, and the remnants of the 11 Angas together with certain other older texts were redacted about the middle of the 5th century AD Side by side, a number of quasi-canonical texts were also compiled by eminent Acharyas like Kundakunda, Vattakera, UmaSvami, Sivarya and Yativrishabha, during the first and second centuries of the Christian era. The original language of the canon the Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, most of the other texts also being in Prakrit. A vast exegetical literature came into being and numerous independent works and treatises
was
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