Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 54

192
JAIN JOURNAL
But in other respects also the admission of the laity has produced decisive changes in the life of the clergy. In the education of worldly communities, the ascetic—whose rules of indifference toward all and every thing, make him a being concentrated entirely upon himself and his goal—is united again to humanity and its interests. The duty of educating the layman and watching over his life, must of necessity change the wandering penitents into settled monks-who dedicate themselves to the care of souls, missionary activity, and the acquisition of knowledge, and who only now and again fulfil the duty of changing their place of residence. The needs of the lay communities required the continual presence of teachers. Even should these desire to change from time to time, it was yet necessary to provide a shelter for them. Thus the Upāśraya or place of refuge, the Jaina monasteries came into existence, which exactly correspond to the Buddhist Sanghārāma. With the monasteries and the fixed residence in them appeared a fixed membership of the order, which on account of the Jaina principle of unconditional obedience toward the teacher, proved to be much stricter than in Buddhism. On the development of the order and the leisure of monastic life, there followed further, the commencement of a literary and scientific activity. The oldest attempt, in this respect limited itself to bringing their doctrine into fixed forms. Their results were, besides other lost works, the so-called Anga—the members of the body of the law, which was perhaps originally produced in the third century B.C. Of the Anga, eleven are no doubt preserved among the Svetambaras from a late edition of the fifth or sixth century A.D. These works are not written in Sanskrit, but in a popular Prakrit dialect : for the Jina, like Buddha used the language of the people when teaching. They contain partly legends about the prophet and his activity as a teacher, partly fragments of a doctrine or attempts at systematic representations of the same. Though the dialect is different, they present, in the form of the tales and in the manner of expression, a wonderful resemblance to the sacred writings of the Buddhists.15 The Digambaras, on the other hand, have preserved nothing of the Anga but the names. They put in their place later systematic works, also in Prakrit, and asserts, in vindication of their different teaching, that the canon of their rivals is corrupted. In the further course of history, however, both branches
15 A complete review of the Anga and the canonical works which were joined to
it later, is to be found in A. Weber's fundamental treatise on the sacred writings of the Jainas in the Indische Studien, Bd. XVI, SS. 211-479 and Bd. XVIII, SS. 1-90. The Acaranga and the Kalpa Sutra are translated by H. Jacobi in the S.B.E., Vol. XXII, and a part of the Upasakadasa Sutra by R. Hoernle in the Bibl. Ind. In the estimates of the age of the Anga I follow H. Jacobi, who has throughly discussed the question in S.B.E., Vol. XXII, pp. xxxix-xlvii.