Canonical Literature Of Jainas

Author(s): H R Kapadia
Publisher: Hindi Granth Karyalay

Page 81

THE CANONICAL LITERATURE OF THE JAINAS
[CHAP.
No migration of the Jainas is referred to as leaving this land for some other country as was the case with the Zoroastrians who left their native land as suggested by scholars, on being persecuted by the followers of a different faith. Even then, they do possess at least some fragments of their Holy scriptures. Moreover, there is no mention of any political or social revolution-a cataclysm that seriously disturbed the atmosphere. Even granting that any one or more of the catastrophes here alluded to or the like may have befallen the unlucky, how is it that it could produce such a terribly adverse effect only so far as the knowledge of the Jaina canon was concerned, whereas it failed to produce any perceptible effect on the Holy scriptures of the non-Jainas who were the coinhabitants of the Jainas ?
: Without any further dilation, I may add that this idiosyncrasy to which some of the Digambaras seem to have fallen a prey-the view that the lamp of the Jaina canon ceased to burn and illuminate from Vīra Samvat 683 or so is a thing I shudder at. It has deprived us of the valuable legacy we could have got, by way of the preservation of at least some part or parts of the Jaina canon and its enrichment by way of its exposition at the hands of emi. nent Digambara scholars like Akalauka and others.
As regards the allegations viz. (1) that the Śvetāmbara canonical literature is a patch-work and (2) that it is not genuine, I do not think it worth while to refute them; for, it appears that Vincent Smith's The Jaina Stūpa and other Antiquities of Mathurā
is mentioned to have occurred. No earthquake on a huge or small scale is referred to as having brought about the ruins of the Jainas. Nowhere the crust of the earth seems to have given way and swallowed all it
could lay hand on. 1 Cf. History of Zoroastrianism by Dastur Dr. M. N. Dhalla (Oxford Uni
versity Press, New York). In its review published in the moffusil edn. of the "Times of India" dated 15th oct., 38 it is said:
"The History of Zoroastrianism falls into three well-defined linguistic periods: The Gathic, the later Avestan, and the Pahalvi. Its beginning is lost in the mist of forgotten ages, and the scriptures that have survived are only blurred and broken fragments."-P. B. V.