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Narrative Literature in Jain Māhārästri
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Mahāvīra, which begin with that of Nayasāra, a village officer. Then follows a long series of lives in which the most important are those of Marici, Triprsta, and Priyamitra. At the end comes the life of Mahāvīra himself. The work ends with the attainment of omniscience by the lord and his sermons to his first disciples, who become his 11 Ganadharas.
The language of the present work is much more grammatical and chaste than that of older works like Paümacariya and others. There is no use of words without inflections nor of cases wrongly used. This is mainly due to the influence of classical Sanskrit works, that always exercised their influence over Prākrit throughout its career, and later became more and more dominant so as to render it servile and imitative. The style of Gunacandra is obviously influenced by writers like Kālidāsa and Bāņa, from whose classics he derives many of his ideas and expressions. The result of his Sanskrit studies is the use of long and intricate compounds, figures of words, only based upon paranomasia, and rare and poetic words only to be met with in Sanskrit. It also led to the decrease of purely Deśī words which were substituted by tatsama and tadbhava words as being more scholarly.
But along with this change in language the poetic value of the work has also changed. The monotonous flow of the ealier writers now gives place to a varied and careful use of different metres, even though Gāthā continues to predominate. Beautiful descriptions of kings and towns are to be met with on every page of the work, and the whole work stands out as a charming Kävya standing comparison with other works in Sanskrit of its nature. The modern date of the work has made it possible for the writer to introduce a few Apabhramśa strophes to exhibit his knowledge of that language. In still later works they grow more and more extensive. Mahāvīracarita has some 50 Apabhramśa verses, which appear to show the Gurjara dialect of the Nāgara Apabhramsa as pointed out by the Gen. sing. in -ha.
The famous commentator Abhayadeva had a pupil Vardhamāna who wrote two Prākrit works. One of it is the romance Manoramācarita having 15000 Gathās, written in A. D. 1083; and another is his Ādināthacarita in 11000 verses, divided into 5 Prastāvas, giving the life of Rşabha. It was written at Stambhatīrtha in A. D. 1103. It has many Apabhramśa verses scattered throughout the work. In the same year was written the Santināthacarita of Devacandra, the teacher of the famous writer Hemacandra. He belonged to the Purņatallagaccha, and was a pupil of Gunasenasūri. His work covers 12000 ślokas, and at the beginning of it, he refers to earlier