Jaina Ontology

Author(s): K K Dixit
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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JAINA ONTOLOGY
However, the tradition of naming the forty five texts in question (or, for that matter, the thirty two texts in question) as the Agamic texts and sub-dividing them in the above manner is not much old. What seems to have happened is that sometimes near about the 15th-16th Centuries A.D. (may be still later) the intellectual leadership of the Svetambara Jainas took stock of the mass of scriptural literature available to them, selected from it forty-five texts and sub-divided them in the above manner; not much after. wards the aniconists among them thought fit to repudiate the authority of thirteen of these texts and to introduce a slight change in the original scheme of subdivision. As can be legitimately surmised the aniconists must have rejected those texts which to them appeared to support iconolatory, but from the point of view of the evolution of Jaina thought the texts rejected by them deserve as serious notice as those accepted by them. [The point remains essentially valid even if the texts in question were rejected on some other ground. For, this ground is not likely to be much weighty.] Of course, the texts rejected by them are not as important as those accepted by them, for they have taken good care to repudiate only such texts as are not of basic importance. But that is not the point. What is to be noted is that we here have before our eyes a case of dismissing historically important texts on rather flimsy grounds and the fact provides a clue to the understanding of the earlier Digambara repudiation of the whole lot of Agamic literature. For it is a legitimate surmise that sometimes near about the 6th -7th Century A.D. (may be still later) the Digambara repudiated the authority of the Agamic texts available to them on the alleged ground that most of them contained something or else that went against such beliefs of theirs as that a true monk must go stark naked, that a woman cannot attain mokşa, that an omniscient person takes no meals, and so on and so forth. This however is not to deny that even from the point of view of evolution of Jaina thought the forty-five Agamic texts constitute a mixed lot for they include on the one hand texts like Catuḥsarana and Bhaktaparijňa which were composed by an author blonging to the 11th Century A.D. and on the other hand texts like Acarang asutra-prathama śrutaskandha, Sutrakṛtängasūtra-prathamašrutas kandha and early portions of Bhagavatisūtra which are all of a genuinely hoary antiquity. But that again is not the point. For what is to be noted is that in overwhelming majority of cases the material here included belongs to a date earlier than the 6th-7th Centuries A.D. while in certain very important cases it belongs to the pre-Christian Centuries. Hence for reconstructing the history of Jaina thought for the pre-Christian Centuries the only documentary material now at our disposal are Agamic texts belonging to this period while for doing the same for the early Christian Centuries the Agamic texts belonging to the period constitute an important part of our documentary material-the other part being costituted by a number of non-Agamic Svetambara texts and by a few Digambara