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or some holy personage, after whom they are denominated, as the Jinadatta Raya Charitra, Pújyapáda Charitra, and others. They have a number of works explanatory of their philosophical notions and religious tenets of the sect, as well as rituals of practice, and a grammatical system founded on the rules of ŚÁKATAYANA is illustrated by glosses and commentaries. The Jains have also their own writers on astronomy and astrology, on medicine, on the mathematical sciences, and the form and disposition of the uni
verse.
This general view of Jain literature is afforded by the MACKENZIE Collection, but the list there given is very far from including the whole of Jain literature, or even a considerable proportion. The works there alluded to are, in fact, confined to Southern India, and are written in Sanskrit, or the dialects of the Peninsula; but every province of Hindustan can produce Jain compositions, either in Sanskrit or its vernacular idiom, whilst many of the books, and especially those which may be regarded as their scriptural authorities, are written in the Prákrit or Mágadhi, a dialect which, with the Jains as well as the Bauddhas, is considered to be the appropriate vehicle of their sacred literature.
RELIGIOUS SECTS
The course of time, and the multiplication of writings, have probably rendered it almost impossible to reduce what may be considered as the sacred literature of the Jains to a regular system. They are said to have a number of works entitled Siddhantas and
