________________
THE CANONS OF THE JAINS
43
Jain Sūtras, and no chronological order of the Agamas is claimed in the present work,
During the course of three rcccnsions thic present Jain Sūtras have undergone considerable changes, and so thcicis much confusion icgarding the stock lists and other material presented in thc Sūtras; moi cover, the Āgamas have not been critically edited so far
The commentary period should not be taken as onc with the Sutra period. The commentators belong to a much latci period when many of the ti aditions belonging to the Agamas had been lost
Inspite of the thrcc iccensions which the Jain texts had undergone and the conscqucnt changes whuch were effected in the body of the texts from time to time it would not be an cxccgration to say that much of the material which thcy embody point to a much cirly civilization than the sixth century AD, when the final reaction of the texts Wels (Nected Our comparison of the social material in the Jain Silas with the material of the same in the Buddhist Topitaha ch as pointed out by tlic scholais is definitcly old for instanic, the icfcicnce in the architectural terms in the Jain Sutras with then comparison with the aichitectural terms in the Pali Sullas should convincc us of the truthfulness of our assertion. It is not the purpose of the present work to malc a comparative sturly of the parallel features of the Jain and Buddhist ūras which should form a separate study by itself. But wherever possible suclı parallelisins have been pointed out
Finally, one thing should be borne in mind, while studying the Jain Sūtras that the age of every part of it should be judged on its own merits with the help of other literature and when the converging cvidence supports the genesis of the tradition, then alonc its age could be approximately fixed.