Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 76

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JAIN JOURNAL
2 Sutras without a common name : Nandi and Anuyogadvāra ; (6) 4 Mūlasūtras : Uttarādhyayana, Āvašyaka, Dašavaikālika and Pindaniryukti. Most of the canonical books have been edited in India, some with commentaries. English translations have been published of the Acāranga, Sūtrakstānga, Upasakadaśās, Antakrddaśās, Anuttaropapātikadašās, Uttarādhyayana and two Kalpasūtras.
The redaction of the canon took place under Devarddhi Gani in 980 after the Nirvāņa (A.D. 454, according to the common reckoning, actually perhaps 60 years later) ; before that time the sacred texts were handed down without embodying them in written books. In the interval between the composition and the final redaction of the texts and ever afterwards, they have undergone many alterations-transposition of parts, additions, etc.—-traces of which can still be pointed out.21 Along with these alterations there seems to have gone on a gradual change of the language in which the texts were composed. The original language, according to the Jainas, was Ardhamagadhi, and they give that name, or Magadhi, to the language of the present texts. But it has, most probably, been modernised during the process of oral transmission. The older parts of the canon contain many archaic forms for which in later texts distinct Maharastri idioms are substituted. It will be best to call the language of the sacred texts simply Jaina Prakrit, and that of later works Jaina Maharastri.
As the works belonging to the canon are of different origin and age, they differ greatly in character. Some are chiefly in prose, some in verse and some in mixed prose and verse. Frequently a work comprises distinctly disparate parts put together when the redaction of the canon took place. The older prose works are generally very diffuse and contain endless repetitions ; some, however, contain succinct rules, some, besides lengthy descriptions, systematic expositions of various dogmatic questions ; in others, again, the systematic tendency prevails throughout. A large literature of glosses and commentaries has grown up round the more important texts.22 Besides the sacred literature and the commentaries belonging to it, the Jainas possess separate works, in close material agreement with the former, which contain systematic expositions of their faith, or parts of it, in Prakrit and Sanskrit. These works, which generally possess the advantage of accuracy and clearness have in their turn become the object of learned labours of commentators. One of the oldest is Umasvati's Tattvārthādhigamasutra, a Svetambara work,
21 See Weber, loc. cit., 8. 22 The development of this commenting literature has been studied by E. Leumann,
ZDMG, xlvi (1892), 585 ff.