Scientific Contents in Prakrta Canons

SR No.: 001670
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: N L Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith
Publication Year: 1996
Total Pages: 608
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Science, & Religion
File Size: 9 MB

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64: Scientific Contents in Prākṛta Canons
importance of the two types of Śruta with its size and contental description. They hold however, that almost all the Śruta has been lost because of absence of knowers gradually by 156 A. D. (215 A. D. ). Thus, the Digambaras do not treat the extant canons as authentic because of large number of interpolations in them during the three councils between 357 B. C. to 453 A. D., i. e., nine hundred and eighty years after Mahavira, whereby they lost their original form. They neither took part in these congregations nor thought of committing the original version to writing even at a later stage, per chance feeling this act as going against the rules of naked asceticism. They could not realise the importance and future implication of this conservatism realised by present scholars. Two surprisingly contradictory phenomena are observed in this case which require clarification:
(i) The Digambaras have proved themselves more conservative in following their ascetic discipline restricting it for the self only.
(ii) The better ascetic discipline of meditation, equanimity etc. should be associated with more internal energy and capacity to memorise. Despite this, Malvania has proved with the help of 683 year tradition that the rate of loss of scriptures in Digambaras, is comparatively very high.40
However, all the scriptures are not lost at a time, they are lost partly and there might still be partly scripture-knowing preceptors. They mentioned about the existing scriptures upto the beginning of ninth century A. D. (i.e. Dhavalā period) but nothing about their written form. The reason for not committing the original scriptures to writing and higher rate of their loss in case of Digambaras requires critical evaluation.
The Digambaras, thus, have no original canon extant. Whatever they have at present, is some pro-canonical texts composed between 100 B. C. to 500 A. D. However, whether the extant canonical literature is religiously recognised by them or not, their contents are important for scholarly studies, because a good part of this literature, though put to writing at a later