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208
Amrita
other thing. The habit of giving illustrations to ethical rules had often led the author to migrate into the alluring province of story-telling while the usual habit of drawing moral conclusions from the current stories and anecdotes helped to bridge whatever small difference there remained. Even though the writers mostly refrained from giving full stories in their works or remained satisfied by alluding to the chief characters or the main incidents of the story, their commentators were not able to resist the temptation of giving them in full and sometimes at great length. This was not always without justification as they were sometimes absolutely necessary for the understanding of the text. In such circumstances what should lead one to call a work didactic should be the intention of the author to offer words of advice more than to give out a treatise on ethical matter or some collection of stories, which is usually found expressed in choosing an appropriate title to his work..
The presence of didactic verses in the Ardha-Magadhi canon shows us that this spirit of moralising was present in Jainism from the very beginning. Along with the rules of conduct intended for the monks, on whom a stricter code of behaviour was imposed, we find there verses giving advice which can be applicable to monks as well as lay men with the sole intention of helping them in behaving well in the present world., In works like the Uttaradhyayana, Daśavaikālika and others we find such verses in abundance. In the Jñätädharmakatha and other story-books of the canon the habit of moralising from popular stories is found considerably developed. In the first group of works we find the general morality of the prudent people of this world which Jainism shared along with other Indian religions while in the later group even though Jainism draws many of the stories from, the common stock of folklore current at the time, the fact of moralising from them is certainly its own peculiarity and the moral culled out from them is distinctly Jainistic and incorporated into it from outside. This didactic element is found to increase in the Niryukti works which are the earliest books besides the canon. There we find good many stories incorporated anew and this also fort the special reason of advising the readers. Gnomic verses are abundant and the germs of the anthologies can be traced in the fact that the treatment of various subjects is put together by chance coincidence and numerical. consideration. In the Niryukti on Daśavaikälika we find a chapter dealing with topics like the acquisiton of wealth and love and its fulfilment. In the Avasyaka-Niryukti we find a saying like 'a small fire, a young king and at young serpent are not to be slighted as being young' which can find its way in any anthology.