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JAIN LITERATURE Prof. Sagarmal Jain
Among the religions of the word, Jainism is a very minor religion, because it does not cover even one per cent of the total worldpopulation; but its literary contribution is not much less than other world's major religions. As per available information total volume of known Jain works is more than twenty thousand and number of total Jain manusrcipts is more than one milion.
The word 'Jaina literature' does not mean only the Jain religious and philosophical literature. It also includes the secular literature written by Jain seers and scholars. Thus it covers a very vast area. It includes various branches of knowledge, such as metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic, cosmology, biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, geography, history, astronomy, astrology, various arts, architecture, grammar, linguistics, medical sciences and so on. In Jaina canonical literature these different subjects are intermingled, though there are some specific Jain works which deal with only their own subjects.
Though the primary Jain literature was composed in the Prakrit language, but later on Jain scholars composed their works in Sanskrit, Apabhramsa, Kannada, Maru-gurjer, Hindi, Gujrati, Marathi and English also. Its composition had been begun from 5th century B.C. and remain continue till today.
We can divide total Jain literature into these five categoriesCanonical literature along with its commentaries.
1.
2.
Works on Jain metaphysics, karma philosophy, cosmology, epistemology and Logic.
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