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JAIN LITERATURE Hierarch Abhaideva Suri was one of the great commentators of these canons. Haribhadra Suri was also a well-known author of some of these commentaries. As the Jain literature devoloped very rapidly throughout the length and breadth of India, we find a large number of Jain scholars, authors, commentators and poets cropping up in almost every age up to the present time. The texts or original canons are in Prakrit or Màgadhi or more properly speaking Ardha-Magadhi, the popular dialect as we have already stated, and the commentaries are embodied in Sanskrit.
'Bhadrabahu, who was a very distinguished Jain ascetic and scholar of the age, was the head of the Church, when the Sangha met at Pataliputra to collect the canonical texts : He composed the Kalpa Sutra, which is one of the nine divisions of Chapter VIII on the discourse on Pratyakhyan of a great work known as Dasåshruta Skanda. It is held in high estimation as already stated and is annually reád during the Pajjusan festival in Chaturmasya with great veneration and eclat.
