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JAINA GAZETTE.
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in Braj Bhasha and their Vernacular Gujrati. In the same time their laymen caused to be built the splendid temples which adorn the country, promoting a fine and impressive plastic and architectural art, and to be copied thousands of manuscripts, and to be established libraries for their monks. These monks, on the whole, were not narrow minded. Like Hemchandra himself they studied also the Shastras of other religious communities, and hence their spiritual culture, which is abundantly evidenced by the huge mass of Jain works still existing in our days, was perhaps the highest in all India. What would have become of Prakrit literature without the Jain writers ? It is my firm conviction that owing to this very spiritual culture, the Jains maintained themselves and their influence in India amongst the people as well as at the courts of Hindu and Mohammedan rulers. To the unlearned they gave an attractive literature in the Vernacular, and at the courts of the Princes they vied in literary art and learning with the most cultured Hinduistic or Mohammedan scholars, and they used the influence they gained in this way over the minds of the rulers to make them just and benign to their subjects.
In order to show how far this influence manifested itself in the field of literary production, and how the Jain monks worked in order to raise the cultural level of their countrymen, let me give in short the results of my studies on the Panch
tantra.
The original work, the reputed author of which was a Brahman named Vishnoo Sharma, must have been written between about 300* and 570 A. D. Its author was not some Bauddha, as Benfey presumed, but a Vaishnava, who appears to have lived in Kashmir. His aim was to teach young princes the arthshastra or, doctrine of state-craft. In order to do so he wrote five Tantras in the form of akhyika, or elaborate prose story interspersing stanzas from various sources, and even
*Winternitz has pointed out,that the word Dinar occurs several times in the text. Now this is Latin word for a Roman coin, denarins. The "e" of the first syllable of this word, as inscriptions show was changed to "i" not before the 2nd Century A.D.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
