Jaina Philosophy Historical Outline

Author(s): Narendra Nath Bhattacharya
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

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Jain Philosophy in Historical Outline
Tamil poet Vāmanācāryar may also be referred to in this connection. Like other religions Jainism also claims the writers of Tolkāppiyam and Kural among its adherents. Other famous works like the Silappadikāram, Nilakesi, Yasodharākāvya, etc. have bearing on Jainism. These works belong to a period when Jainism was flourishing in the Tamil country, and this must be anterior to the seventh century AD. From the seventh century onwards Vaisnavism and Saivism succeeded in eliminating Jain influences from Tamil literature.
Jain influence contributed a glorious chapter to Kannada literature. The earliest Kannada work Voddha-ārādhana (eighth century) has a professedly Jain background and its author Sivakotyācārya was a devout Jain. NȚpatunga's Kavirājamārga, a work on poetics, mentions a number of Jain writers, but their works are lost. Of the ninth century Kannada works on Jain subjects, Gunavarma's Neminātha Purāna is the most important. In 941 AD Pampa, one of the three 'gems' of Kannada literature, composed Adipurāņa which describes in beautiful language the life of Rşabha, the first Tīrthamkara. Ponna, the second of the 'gems' who was Pampa's contemporary, composed śāntipurāņa, the life story of the sixteenth Tīrthamkara. The third Ranna wrote Ajitapurāna (993 AD) which deals with the second Tirthamkara. Cāvunda Rāya, a contemporary of the aforesaid 'gems', composed a Purāna after his name in which he gave a comprehensive history of the 24 Tīrthamkaras. Nāgacandra or Pampa II of the twelfth century wrote Mallinātha Purāņa, the biography of the nineteenth Tirthamkara, and a Jain version of the Rāmāyaṇa with the title Rāmacandra-carita-purāna, popularly known as the Pampa-Rāmāyana. Important among other Kannada Jain writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were Janna, author of a Purāņa on the life of the fourteenth Tīrthamkara, Guņavarma II who wrote the Puspadanta Purāna on the life of the ninth Tīrthamkara, Karsapārya who was the author of Neminātha Purāna and Ācanna and Kamalabhava who wrote on the twentyfourth and sixteenth Tīrthamkaras respectively. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries there was marked decline of Jain writings in Kannada. The Purāņas, however, continued to appear. Madhura, Mangarāsa and Sāntikirti wrote Purāṇas on the lives of Dharmanātha, Nemi-Jineśa and Sāntinātha respectively. Bhāskara, Bommarasa and Koteśvara wrote poems on the life-story of Jivandhara, a pious Jain king.
Next to Kannada, the Gujarati language served as the most effective vehicle for the propagation of Jain teachings and ideals. The