Jain Journal 1972 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 80

APRIL, 1972
The Jainas also made use of all the current literary styles, both in prose and poetry and even invented new such as the Campu (prose and poetry mixed). They did not hesitate to borrow or adopt what they thought was best in non-Jaina classical literature. Epics, Pauranic kāvyas, didactic pieces, devotional poems and lyrics, tales and stories, dramas and romances, allegories and satires-all these the Jaina writers of the period handled with success. Apart from their ontological, metaphysical, philosophical and ritualistic literature they wrote valuable works on logic and dialectics, ethics and politics, grammar and lexicon, poetics and prosody, yogic sciences and medicine, mathematics and astronomy, astrology and other occult arts. Here and there we get useful technical information about music, painting, sculpture, architecture and town-planning. Interesting information about zoology, botany, alchemy, chemistry and other physical sciences is also not wanting. The Puranas, Caritras and the commentaries on the Agamas are full of geographical information which can help to identify many an unidentified site and to locate new ones. We also find names of many yet unknown kingdoms, foreign lands and non-Aryan tribes. The Jaina literary sources also throw a flood of light on India's inland and foreign trade both by land and sea routes, on commerce and industry, commercial organisations and trade guilds, market conditions and economic life of the people, and on means of transport and communication. There are some vivid accounts of sarthavahas or inland caravans and of mercantile navigation, even of naval military expeditions. Lastly, the Jainas wrote valuable commentaries on a number of important Brahmanical and Buddhist works. This highly tolerant and cooperative spirit of the Jaina scholars helped to create a harmony in the cultural atmosphere of the times and contributed largely to the cultural unity of the country and to its all round progress which the foreign travellers visiting India in those times could not but envy.
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The few, piecemeal and scattered attempts made by same scholars are enough to prove how Jaina literary traditions can corroborate the evidence of many an archaeological discovery, viz., the flood of Pataliputra in the time of the Muranda kings (3rd century A.D.), the invasion and devastation of Taxila by the Turuskas (3rd century A.D.), the Jaina stūpa of Mathura, the Kalki tradition, etc. A perusal of the works on Greater India shows that Jaina influence as part of general Indian cultural influence can distinctily be traced in the ancient Indialized kingdoms of South-East Asia. (For instance, in those lands vegetarianism predominated and animal sacrifice was almost unknown; their year was Kartik badi like that of the Jainas; it is the Jaina version of the Rāmāyaṇa that was popular there; some of the inscriptions are found