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Five Anga-texts story-collection
Avadānas. There is some likelihood of this comparison being misunderstood. For our Jaina texts are too tiny to seem to be any sort of match for those voluminous Brahmanical and Buddhist literary compositions. But these Brahmanical and Buddhist compositions were not the growth of one day and, strictly speaking, they merit comparison not with our Jaina texts but with the entire mass of Jaina story literature at whose head these texts stand, So in the above context the precise point of comparison between the Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina texts in question was not their volume but the fact that they are all primarily aimed at edifying the laity. Certainly, the sociocultural evolution of the country had then reached a stage which required that the lay followership of a religious sect be provided with a mode of worship specially suited to its life-circumstances and a literature specially suited to its tastes and intellectual capacities. In the sphere of mode of worship the response of the hour was the cult of imageworship (including stupa-worship) while in the sphere of literature it was the mass of compositions we are considering now. As time passed on these compositions became more and more ornate in style, a fact signifying the growing maturity of the tastes and intellectual capacities of the Indian people. Confining ourselves to the Jaina camp, we might note that good many stories of Jñatadharmakatha (e. g. the very first story) are composed to an extremely ornate style reminisent of such admittedly late texts as Aupapātika, Rajapraśniya, Jinacarita and the like. A still more masterly employment of literary skill is to be observed in the still later Jaina storytexts composed in verse as well as prose. It is in the background of this entire subsequent development that judgment has to be passed on the five Anga-texts that are of the form of a story-collection.
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We have already taken summary note of the content of the Angic story collections, viewing it from the standpoint of the theoretical points elucidated therethrough. Note might also be taken of this content, viewing it from another standpoint. Thus a story appearing here develops either a social theme or a mythological one. By social theme is to be understood a theme exclusively taking up the doings of human beings, by mythological theme one also (or exclusively) taking up the doings of gods and goddesses. Particularly noteworthy in this connection are the stories compiled in Vipakaśruta I (=Karmavipākadaśā) which all develop an almost exclusively social theme. As has been noted, these stories narrate how a person com. mitted some sinful act in his past life and how he reaped the evil conse quence of it in his present life. As such they offer an interesting insight into the working of a Jaina author's mind on the questions of what constitutes a sinful act and what constitutes the punishment for such across ten cases of what an act. For in these ten stories we is considered to be a sinful act and ten cases of what is considered
come
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