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being. Hence this trend, keeping in view the spiritual evolution of a living being, determines the 14 points of investigation (märganästhāna) for the examination of and search for the 14 stages of spiritual evolution of living beings (gunasthāna) which are known as Jivasamāsa. These 14 points of investigation are the different divisions of living beings due to their gati etc.
Prajñāpanā represents the first trend while old works on Karma like Karmaprakrti, Satkhandägama, etc. represent the second trend. The state of affairs being what it is, it becomes very difficult for us to determine the chronological order of these works. In the 15th Century and even after when the Sthānakavāsi tradition tried to present in the form of thokada works, written in Gujarati, the ideas and thoughts of Agamas, it presented the marganästhānas etc. in such a way as could be easily grasped by an ordinary reader. And in the Anga work named Sthânănga too a particular item is presented keeping in view the number of its constituents. But let us remember that even in the days of Sthanānga the ideas relating to living beings and Karma were presented in a complicated manner. So, style of treatment-i. e. its simplicity or otherwise--cannot be a determining factor in fixing up the chronological order of these works. This is so because the nature of the style was dependent on the objective of the author and on the nature of the subject-matter-simple or subtle. Hence we would be making a great blunder in fixing up the chronological order of Prajñāpanā and Şatkhandāgama if we were guided only by the fact that the treatment of the subject-matter in the Satkhandagama is more detailed and subtle than that found in Prajñāpanasútra. Therefore we should tackle differently the problem of their chronological order. We should first study such works independently and only afterwards we should try to fix their chronological order. According to both these works, literature of both these types is rooted in Drstivāda. This means that innumerable Ācāryas have variously presented the subject-matter of Drstivada itself to achieve different objectives. This presents one more difficulty in fixing up the chronological order of the works on the basis of the nature of the treatment of the subjectmatter-simple or subtle. If one were not to take into consideration all these facts he can easily-but wrongly-conclude that as the discussions in Prajñāpanā are more simple and brief than those in Satkhāndāgama the former is prior to the latter. But on account of the difficulty as already pointed out it is not proper to fix Prajñāpanā prior to Şatkhandagama. So, we have given up this manner of fixing up the chronological order of the works on the basis of the nature of their treatment. Now, it becomes
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