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जैनविद्या ऐवं प्राकृत : अन्तरशास्त्रीय अध्ययन
was Brajbhasa, 10 while in others it was akin to, what is now known as, Khadi Boli. 11 It is interesting to note that many of these Jain writers in Hindi belonged to non-Hindi-speaking areas such as the Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat.'? This development can be explained by the fact that the Jainas, who were traders by profession, had acquired taste for it as well as proficiency because of their visits to areas around Delhi and eastwards upto the borders of Bengal, where Hindi was in use. B
As was the case with other contemporary Indian languages, poetry remained the dominant form of literary expression : though the poetry by Jain authors studiously avoided Sringara rasa, the dominant motif of the age.14 It was filled with religious ardour, was devotional in character and was full of spiritual content. There have been very few exceptions. 15
The stress on devotional element in poetry was a direct manifesta. tion of Jain attitude to sex. life. The Jain ethics stressed a disciplined sex-life for the laity and complete abstinence for the ascetics. Hence, they did not like to write about things associated with sex. Another factor which contributed to the devotional character of Jain literary output was that most of the authors belonged to the religious order. It was inevitable that they would not write on topices forbidden by their religion. Another factor reinforced the devotional content of poetry by Jain poets. Much of the poetry produced by the Jains of the time 10. Dhirendra Varma and Brajeshwar Varma (eds.), op. cit.,
p. 478 11. Ibid., p. 486 12. Ibid. 13. See my paper, "Jainas in Bihar in the seventeenth century”,
Proceedings, Indian History Congress, December 1972
(Muzaffarpur Session). 14. Dhirendra Verma and Brajeshwar Varma (eds.), op. cit., p.
480; Kamta Prasad Jain, op. cit., p. 118 15. This is obvious from the extracts produced from the writings
of Jain poets of the seventeenth century in the works referred to above by Dhirendra Verma, Brajeshwar Varma and Kamta Prasad Jain. Pandit Nemichandra Shastri, Hindi-Jain-Sahitya Parishilan, Vol. I, pp. 22-23. For exceptions, see p. 235-37
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