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JAINA LITERATURE IN TAMIL
37
purpose of entertaining guests. This is a necessary part of dharma and that violation of it will entail curse from the guests is the firm belief of those who accept Vedic ritualism as religion. A cursory glance at the corresponding chapter in the Kural will convince any reader that dharma here means quite a different thing from what it means in the DharmaŠāstras of the Hindus. Hence we have to reject this suggestion that the work represents merely a translation of the Dharma-śāstras for the benefit of the Tamil reading public.
Turning to circumstantial evidence, we have to note the following facts. The Jaina commentator of the Tamil work called Nilakēši freely quotes from this Kuraļ; and whenever he quotes he introduces the quotation with the words “as is mentioned in our scripture."3 From this it is clear that the commentator considered this work as an important Jaina scripture in Tamil. Secondly, the same implication is found in a non-Jaina Tamil work called Prabodhacandrõdaya“. This Tamil work is evidently modelled
1. Baudhāyana-Dharma-sūtra, 3rd praśna, 3rd khanda, 6th sutra.
2. Tirukkural, Arattuppāl, chapter 9, verses 1-10.
3. The expression used by the commentator, emm-öttu, is rendered into English by M. S. Ramaswamy Ayyangar (op. cit., pp. 42-43) as 'Our own Bible'.
4. The following are the editions of this work :
(i) Prabodhacandrõdayam-Ed. by Arumugaswamigal, 1876;
(Contd.)
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