History of Canonical Literature of Jainas

Author(s): Hiralal R Kapadia, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 90

REDACTION OF THE JAINA CANON
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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 Vira 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 eminent Digambara scholars like Akalanka and others.
As regards the allegations viz. (1) that the Svetāmbara 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 and the learned opinions of Indologists can very well serve the necessary purpose. Moreover, I do not intend to enter into a controversy in this connection; but at the same time I am prepared to hear convincing arguments that may be advanced to support the allegations, and if satisfied, I shall identify myself with persons making these allegations. But, at least for the present I hold a contrary view, though I admit that some passages here and there appear to wear a colour of a patch-work. Under these
cumstances I shall therefore sum up this discussion by quoting the following lines from the late Prof. Jacobi's introduction to The Sacred Books of the East (Vol. xxii, p. xxxix) :
"Devarddhi's position relative to the sacred literature of the Jainas appears therefore to us in a different light from what it is generally believed to have
1. Cf. A History of Indian Literature (Vol. II, pp. 434-435).