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INTRODUCTION
Dr. Jagdishchandra Jain India has been a land of tales (katha) from time immemorial. Folk-lore which contains elements from nature such as magic, sorcery, spirits, ghosts, animals and birds, incorporating traditional beliefs, practices, legends and the tales of the common, uneducated people, transmitted orally, is the earliest form of stories throughout the world. Folk-lore has given rise to short narratives which might be called story germs.
The stories are divided into various categories: stories pertaining to righteousness (dharma), attainment of wealth (artha) or desire for sensual enjoyments (kāma). The dharmakathā is further divided into four types: pleasant or catching (āksepini), unpleasant or distracting (viksepiņi), leading to knowledge or enlightenment (samvega-janani) and leading to detachment or renunciation (nirveda-janani). Jain authors though have dealt with artha and kāma stories as well, they have given prominence to stories pertaining to dharma. We come across kathakas or story-tellers associated with jesters, ballad singers and bards, who assembled at a city-garden or a sacred shrine and entertained people by telling fascinating tales and anecdotes. In order to make their narratives fascinating, the story-tellers repeated them, exaggerated them and dramatised them.
Innumerable tales and stories have been composed by Indian writers from ancient times, out of which the Brhatkathā, a great store-house of Indian tales and possessed of wonderful meaning (abdhutārtha) by celebrated Guņádhya, has been lost to us. It is stated that listening to stories is a meritorious deed and it leads to happiness as it causes the emerging of suppressed emotions. The author of the Vetāla-pañcavimśatikā (25, p.222) has stated that that the narrator or the listener of even a part of stories narrated in his work, becomes free from sins and is not afflicted by evil. Later on this goal was achieved by composing didectic narrations in Prakrit and Sanskrit literature.
Jain writers employed all types of media such as fables, fairy tales, parables, riddles, similies, illustrations, examples and so on from the rich store house of popular folk-tales. Jain ascetics in order to preach their sermons, travelled from country to country, engaging themselves in religious discussions, thereby propagating their creed. Since the monks were drawn from different section of society, they were well-acquainted with local popular tales and anecdotes, related to workers, artisans, tradesmen, witch-doctors, fortune-tellers, beggars, mendicants and so on. These folk-tales were simple and endoweed with secular elements, therefore were devoid of any moral teaching. As they were free from any sectional or religious touch, they could be accomodated by any religious teacher according to his requirement. It is to be noted that such tales and stories had been in existence among the people before they found entry into literature and according to scholars they found their place first of all in Prakrit literature. Gradually as the folk-tales and anecdotes were transformed into the tales of marality, the narrative literature started growing fast. For example, the stories from the Nāyādhammakahāo, believed to be narrated by Mahavira himself, are tinged with religious and moral preaching. The story of two eggs of a peahen (Mayūri-andaņāyam) supports the fact that the monks and nuns must not entertain any doubt about the usefulness of self-restraint. Another story of two turtles
1. Read the description of Punnabhadda shrine situated in Campā, Ovãiya 2. 2. Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, III, 1,302
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