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Acharya Sanghadas Gani, the famous commentator (Bhashya) of Agams, has stated— "There is no difference between the knowledge of Tirthankars and omniscients. The Keval-jnana of and exposition of religious fundamentals by Bhagavan Mahavir was same as that of Bhagavan Risabhadeva. In essence (artha) the sermons of all Tirthankars remain same. The apparent variations are due to the variations in the styles of textual forms given by the Ganadhars and Sthavirs. Ganadhars are the authors of only the Dvadashangi (the twelve limbed corpus of Jain canon). The authors of Angabahya Agams (scriptures other than the Angas) are Sthavirs. Therefore the Angabahya Agams derive their authenticity from the Anga Agams."
This Shri Sthaananga Sutra is the third among the eleven Anga Sutras. When we look at the description and list of contents of Sthaananga as mentioned in Nandi Sutra and other works, we find that the available text has undergone a considerable change. Of the many reasons for this change the most important one is that the post-Mahavir area of movement of Shramans in eastern India underwent difficult times of a series of droughts of extended duration. These hard times made the availability of acceptable alms for ascetics extremely difficult. As a consequence many profound scholarly ascetics took the ultimate vow and abandoned their earthly bodies. Many scholars of Dvadashangi migrated to other areas. Under the influence of afflictions and regressive times the general level of memory got reduced, the disciple lineages disintegrated and the Shrut scholars who could impart knowledge of Agams became scarce, all these and many other reasons caused a steady decline in the invaluable wealth of Shrut-jnana. The still extant scholarly ascetics lived in remote areas with no means of communication and interaction. This caused textual variations. The influence of tonal variations of local languages was natural in pronunciation of many words as was the influence of local customs and rituals on the interpretation of many terms and concepts. For this reason Agam-conventions were organized from time to time by ascetics for the purpose of protecting the dwindling Shrut-jnana through
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