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A Comparative Study of Swetamber & Digambar Literature
was not in Sanskrit but in one of the Prākrit dialects; and this dialect, according to the tradition of both the sects, was (sárva) Ardha-Māgadni. That they mutually parted with a common property of literature is also clear from some common verses and common legends that have been independently preserved by Digambaras and Swetambaras ( See my Introduction to Pravacanasara, Bombay 1935, pp. 33 foot-note 3, 44 foot-note 2.). Later on a time came when the Jainas had to use Sanskrit, which they cultivated independent of each other; and t Prakrit word was rendered into Sanskrit in two different ways. The most interesting word is Phaddaya for which Digambaras have Spardhaka as the sanskrit form, while the Swetambara authors used Phaddaka whose sound is not natural in sanskrit phonology.
Some of these words are found as various readings in the Digambara and Swetambara versions of the text of Tattvarthasutra. If one sect had copied the text of the other sect mechanically, there appears to be no propriety in preserving these variations in the text of the sutras. In the light of my above remarks I want to put forth a tentative conjecture of mine on the history of Tattvarthasutra. Originally, before the Jainas divided into two sects, the ground-work of the present Tattvarthasutra might have been a metrical work written in Prakrit. When there was the schismatic division in the church and when both began to use Sanskrit as the medium of instruction, the original work might have been Sanskritised into sutras first independently and then modelled under mutual influence. The name of that original work might have been something like Mokkha-maggo; and a summary of that book appears to have been preserved in Uttaradhyayanasutra, chapter 28, where many phrases are the same as in Tattvarthasutra.
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[ Shree Atmaramji
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