How Jains Know What They Know A Lay Jain Curriculum

Author(s): John E Cort
Publisher: Z_Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_1_002105.pdf and Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_2

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How Jains Know What They know : A Lay Jain Curriculum
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(1968 : 167-70) list several other texts by the same name, none of which is very widely known.
Tattvārthasūtra (Tattvārthādhigamasutra)
The 350-verse Sanskrit Tattvarthasutra by Umāsvāti (c. 4th century) is the most famous of the texts on this list, and the one that clearly would be included in anybody's reading list of essential Jain texts 10. This was the first systematic presentation of Jain doctrine (and in fact went a long way toward creating this systematization) for a pan-Indian audience in the pan-Indian scholarly language of Sanskrit and the pan-Indian genre of śāstra, and so provides a suitable summary of the basics of that doctrine. Starting out with a definition of Jainism as the path to liberation (mokşamārga) consisting of correct faith, knowledge, and conduct (samyagdarśana, samyagjñāna, and samyakcăritra), Umāsvāti then proceeds to outline the Jain understandings of cosmology, ontology, karmic bondage, and liberation. The text itself consists of short, cryptic aphorisms, and so is nearly unintelligible without a commentatory. Dozens of them have been composed over the centuries, starting with one that the Svetāmbara tradition ascribes to Umāsvāti himself. Almost every edition of the text will contain one or more commentaries, some of them older, well-known commentaries in Sanskrit, others more recent vernacular commentaries. Each commentator has leaned heavily on the preceding commentaries, and so any given edition essentially comprises over one thousand years of accumulated tradition.
Concluding Comments
This curriculum provides the reader with everything he or she needs to be both an orthodox Jain, who has both samyagdarśana or correct faith in the verity of the Jain worldview, and samyagjñana or a correct intellectual understanding of the technical specifics of that worldview. It also provides everything needed to be an orthoprax Jain, who is engaged in samyakcāritra and so performs correct ritual conduct in response to that worldview
By reading the Tattvārthasūtra and the Navatattva, one will gain an understanding of Jain metaphysics. By reading the various Sangrahani and Ksetrasamāsa texts, in addition to the Tattvārthasūtra, one will learn the complex Jain theories of cosmology; this Jain vision of a vast universe of souls in bondage underlies the urgency with which Jain teachers urge