Kathakoca or Treasury of Stories

SR No.: 016059
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: C H Tawney
Publisher: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation New Delhi
Publication Year: 1975
Total Pages: 288
Language: English
Classification: Dictionary & Dictionary
File Size: 15 MB

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ascetic into the-keeper of a cell,' in a monastery. From this resulted the establishment of a monkish hierarchy, which is a characteristic feature of the Jain religion. The leisure which these stationary teachers enjoyed gave a stimulus to literary production. The earliest Jain treatises are written in a peculiar form of Prakrit, but the Jains soon found it necessary to employ Sanskrit in their controversies with Bráhmans. But they did not rest satisfied with merely setting forth in Sanskrit the doctrines of their own religion. They threw themselves into the secular learning of the Bráhmans. They have achieved such success in grammar, in astronomy, and even in belles lettres, as to win for them the admiration of their opponents. Some of their works are even now of importance for European science.'*
In the 'Kathákoça' there is occasional mention made of nunneries and of the honour paid to holy women. Hofrath Bühler tells us that nuns are only admitted by the Svetámbaras, and that the Digambaras will have nothing to do with them.t They even go so far as to deny salvation to women. The author of the 'Sarva Darçana Sangraha' concludes the section on the Jains with the following words: 'A woman attains not the highest knowledge, she enters not Mukti, so say the Digambaras, but there is a great division on this point between them and the Cvetámbaras.'
In the notes to my translation I have pointed out many close resemblances of detail between the Jain stories contained in the 'Kathákoça' and European tales. I It is in my opinion highly probable that the European stories in which these resemblances appear were borrowed from India. It has been shown by Professors Max Müller,
* Bühler's Vortrag, pp. 17 and 18.
f Jain nuns are principally recruited from child-widows (Bühler's Vortrag, note 5).
I Instances will be found on pp. 61, 87, 89, 91, 92, 106, 121, 127, 133, 134, 135, 151, 165, 167, 171, 172, 185, 187, 219, 226. In some cases I have merely referred to notes in my translation of the Katha Sarit Ságara.