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ART & LITERATURE
STORIES EXPRESS
THE SOUL
Fables have played a crucial role in the education and promotion of
Jain culture and urgently need revival, argues Richard Fynes
N ARENTS IN JAIN FAMILIES OFTEN TELL THEIR CHILDREN STORIES TO Buddhists and Hindus often collected similar collections of P illustrate the teachings of their religion. When they do so, they didactic stories. It is not unusual for the same story to appear in are participating in an ancient tradition, one that is an important
Jain, Buddhist and Hindu collections, with its moral altered to suit and attractive element of Jain culture. Jain stories are found in many
its religious context. languages. There are printed collections in modern Indian languages
Individual stories in the larger collections are often connected such as Hindi, Gujarati and Kannada, but they were also composed in
by a frame story. For example, characters in the main frame story
often tell stories to each other. Quite frequently characters in the Sanskrit and in varieties of Prakrit. Many of them have now been
sub-stories also relate stories to each other, with the result that the translated into English. Jain stories are
stories are set within each other like a written in a variety of styles. In some the
series of Chinese boxes. language is the simple and direct language of "When Jain ascetics
Stories are an important element in the popular folk story, others are written in
the longer narrative biographies of Ford the ornate and complex language of courtly preached to lay people they makers, kings, ascetics and exemplary lay literature. Some collections are written
people. Their biographies are often entirely in verse, others entirely in prose. used popular stories to gain formed from blocks of shorter stories Some collections, known as campus, are
which cluster around a particular figure
and define the significant moments of his
their attention and educate written in a mixture of verse and prose. How
life. Since the fate of the embodied soul is did this literature originate? The answer lies
of fundamental importance in Jainism, it is in the wish of Jain ascetics to communicate them about morality.”
not surprising that Jain biographies, the truths of Jainism.
besides being concerned with the present When Jain ascetics preached to lay people they used popular lives of their subjects, are also concerned with their past and future stories to gain their attention and to amuse them. The immediate aim lives. Jain authors developed a genre of soul biography, in which of the stories was to provide examples of the three jewels of Jainism: the experiences and adventures of a soul are related through the true insight, right knowledge and proper conduct. The Jain ascetics course of several of its embodiments. These soul biographies doubtlessly hoped that true insight would arise in the minds of those
frequently relate the stories of a pair of souls, which are reunited hearers of the stories to whom Jainism was previously unknown.
and react with each other over a series of parallel lifetimes. The Although the life of renunciation of the Jain monk or nun is the
adventures of the souls during their successive embodiments often
provide the framework in which shorter stories are set. highest ideal in the stories, the ascetics were particularly concerned
Eventually, individual biographies of the important figures in that the stories should provide moral guidance for lay people. Since
Jainism were joined together to form continuous stories covering the content of many of the stories was intended to be relevant for daily
vast periods of time. Western scholars have given the name life, they now provide fascinating information about life in ancient and
universal history to this genre. The earliest examples are written medieval India.
in literary Prakrit, but the latest and fullest example is The Lives of When composing their stories, the Jain ascetics often adapted the Sixty-three Illustrious People and its appendix, The Lives of the already well-known folk-tales to which a Jain moral was added. Since Jain Elders written in Sanskrit by the Shvetambara scholar-monk the stories were meant to instruct by means of entertainment, they are Hemachandra (1089-1172). often funny, exciting, witty, racy or even frightening. Sometimes the Stories are an important element of the literature of both the author's delight in telling a lively story leads him to neglect the Shvetambaras and the Digambaras. Perhaps the most notable moralising element! Eventually, the stories, originally told by word of examples of the Digambara collections are the Varangacarita mouth, were gathered into written collections or anthologies. attributed to the monk Jatasimhanandi dating probably from the
38 Jain Spirit. June - August 2001 Jain Education International 2010 03
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