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INTRODUCTION
Short stories have been used as a convenient medium for educating the people in religious tenets, moral principles and ethical norms. For this purpose, every country has its own fables, legends, short stories and the like and these together, poetry apart, constitute one of the early literary forms which human mind had devised and used From Greece, we have the well-known Aesop's Fables In this country, we have innumerable Pauranic legends aod an equally large number of stories such as those contained in the Panchatantra, Hitopadesa, etc So goes the story that a Brahmin named Vishnu Sharma produced the five principles of state-craft 10 story form to impart lessons to the sons of his patron and king who were totally averse to education and would take to no sane advice or discipline Besides these, every country bas its legends, like the legends of Greece and Rome, of Persia, of India and of China. And then there are the folk tales some of which, like De's Folk Tales of Bengal, have been collected and put into print, while others are 10 currency as words of mouth. Because of its infinite efficacy and popularity, this form of literature has become a precious cultural treasure with all ancient peoples surviving to this day and continues to inspire people from generation to generation
The Jaina Agamic texts are a complex affair, apart from being vast. To make them intelligible, the authors have included many illustrations, even stories, which are now a part of the Sramana cultural tradition. Some of these texts, notably the Vipaka Sutra, which itself is the 11th principal text (anga), are wholly in story form, and in this particular Sutra, ten stories illustrate the pleasant experiences of life and another ten the unpleasant experiences of life, each bunch explaining the operation of pious and impious karma respectively Following the compilation of the principal texts, generations of teachers and commentators have added illustrations of their own to inspire the people to the faith and to pin them