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Literary activities of Jainas in the seventeenth century
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such as biographies and travel accounts. They wrote biographies of their religious leaders, rich patrons within the community and produced one of the Mughal Emperor Akbar." One must admit that these are written in a spirit of hero-worship and hence present a highly exaggerated picture of the achievements of their main character, but nevertheless, they throw light on many aspects of contemporary life, which is valuable for writing a socio-economic history of the period. They describe in detail places, visited by their religious leaders where their patrons lived. Since the route of the journey is traced, one gets a glimpse into the situation of the country-side as well. The way of life of the affluent section of the community and their attitudes are well-depicted. We also get a fleeting glimpse of the life of the upper crust of the society.7
Jain contribution to the development of vernacular literature in this age is significant. One can say that no history of vernacular literature of north-west India in the seventeenth century can ignore achievements of Jain scholars.
The vernacular languages all over north and west India were, in the seventeenth century, in a state of formation."
The Jains had quite early grasped the fact that Hindi was coming into its own and so had begun using the language from the fifteenth century onwards. As more and more time elapsed, they used the language frequently in their writings but by the seventeenth century, the language used by them was not pure Hindi but a mixture of Rajasthani, Gujarati, and Apabhramsa, In some cases the language The reference here is to Kr parasakosa by Santicandra. see Infra.
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Also
See, for example, M. D. Desai (ed.), Bhanucandracarita, Ahmedabad-Calcutta 1941 and Ambalal Premchand Shaha (ed), Digvijaya Mahakarya, Bombay, 1945.
For a representative list of Jain authors in Hindi and their works, Nemichandra Shastri, II, pp. 210-11. See also Dr. Johrapurkar and Kasliwal, Veer Shasan ke Prabhavak Acharya, pp. 194-95. The reference is to the services rendered by Bhattarak Ratnakirti to the development of Hindi. Kamta Prasad Jain, Hindi Jain Sahitya ka Sankshipta Itihas, Kasi, n. d., pp. 82, 100, 101, 109, 126.
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