Jain Granth Prashasti Sangraha 01

Author(s): Parmanand Jain
Publisher: Veer Seva Mandir Trust

Page 7

Eastren India long before the adven of Vedic Aryans, Jaina religion has close affinities with Buddhism but it is essentially independent of and distinct from Vedic religion or its later forms, now loosely called by the name Hinduism. As Jacobi has remarked' In conclusion let me assert my conviction that Jainism is an original system, quite distinct and independent from all others; and that therefore, it is of great importance for the study of philosophical thought and religious life in ancient India. ( Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, vol. II, pp. 59-66, oxford 1908 ).
The Jaina authors have given a distinctive position anů an intellectual basis to their religious and cultural ideology by their religious snd secular writings, both ancient and modern, in different languages like Prakrit. Sanskrit, Apabhramsa, Old-Rajasthani, Old-Hindi, Old-Gujarati, Tamil and Kannada. As Winternitz puts it : There is scarcely any province of Indian literature in which the Jainas have not been able to hold their own. Above all they have developed a voluminous narrative literature. they have written epics and novels, they have composed dramas and hymns; sometimes they have written in the simple language of the people, at other times they have competed in highly elaborate poems, with the best masters of ornate court poetry and they have also produced important works of scholarship.' (A History of Indian Literature, II. p. 483 )
The Jaina works unmistakably possess the stamp of religious spirit, but their authors have never carried their literary pursuits in isolation : they are essentially