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Pre-Mediaeval Jaina Novels
Dr. Jyoti Prasad Jain.
The modern 'novel' and short-story forms of prose fiction are of comparative recent growth, in the west dating since about the beginning of the 18th century, and in India since the last quarter of the 19th century. Literally meaning something 'new and strange', the term ‘novel’ is used to denote that literary form of fictitious prose narrative or tale which presents a picture of real life, especially of the emotional crisis in the life-history of the men and women portrayed. It does not, however, follow that such tales were unknown to world literature before, only they are not always and necessarily in prose, many being in verse as the bulk of the ancient and mediaeval literature, particularly of the didactic and religious type, is.
Western historians of Indian literature like Weber, Buhler, Jacobi, Hertel, Keith, Macdonell and Winternitz, have all been well impressed with the fact that Jaina monks and authors have always been very good tellers of tales. The commentaries to the canonical texts, even many an early didactic and philosophical work, contain, besides a mass of traditions and legends, numerous fairy-tales and stories. The Jaina Puranas and the many Charitras (Paurānic Kavyas), Kathäs, and Kathānakas were often only a frame in which all manners of fairy-tales and stories were inserted. The Champus are ornate novels in prose and verse mixed, and the Dharma-parikshas are didactic-polemical works so closely inter-woven with narratives that they may well be included in the story literature, while there are also satirical humorous tales like the Dhūrtākhyāna. In some cases, तुलसी प्रज्ञा
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