Jainas in History of Indian Literature

Author(s): Jinvijay
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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10] JAINAS IN INDIAN LITERATURE Prof. Hertel' who has shown,
how much the Jainas have contributed to Indian narrative literature in prose and verse. Always fond of story-telling, the Jainas were good story-tellers themselves, and have preserved to us numerous Indian tales that otherwise would have been lost to us.
Some remarkable versions of stories, known also from other sources, and many new tales are found already in the Angas & still more in the Commentaries (Niryuktis, Bhāsyas, Cūrnis, etc.). Some interesting Jaina versions of Epic and Purāņic stories, such as the legend of the sons of Sagara and the descent of the Gangā, occur in Devendra's commentary on the Uttaraijhayana, where we also meet with a version of the Krşņa legend. The latter is already referred to in the eighth Anga. A very curious version of the tale of Draupadi and her five husbands is found in the Nāyādhamma-kahão, the sixth Anga. The most important commentaries, in which numerous and most valuable tales of all kinds are stored up--much like the stories in the Buddhist Jātaka or Dhammapada Commentaries-, are those of Haribhadra, whom we now have to date as early as the 8th, century A. D., Sīlāńka (9th cent.), Sāntisūri and Devendra (11th cent.).
1 In his latest publication "On the Literature of the
Shvetambaras of Gujarat (Leipzig 1922)" Prof. Hertol says "that during the middle-ages down to our days the Jainas, and especially the śvetāmbaras of Gujarat,
were the principal story-tellers of India". 2 See Muniraj shree Jina vijaya, the Date of Haribhadra
Sūri (read at the first Oriental Conference, November 1919, Poona), published in Jaina Sāhitya Samsodhaka