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liberation. This suggests that the Pūrva came into being entrusted with a certain role played in the context of the karma theory and the mechanism of liberation.
The Purva is understood to form an independent literature that is a class different from that of 12 Angas.
(D) The Purva thus gained an authoritative position and came to be re.
garded as the source of 12 Angas and Angabāhyas as well as the source of karma texts in the canonical age. This thought pattern does not occur in the canonical period, for Umāsvāti who stands at the end of the Agamic age states that the Gañadharas compile 12 Angas on the basis of a Tirthankara's teachings, and their later disciples compose Angabāhyas in due course.
(B) Since the duration of Mahavira's Pūrva was stipulated to last for
1,000 years, the post-canonical Jainas began to justify why 14 Pūrvas came to be lost gradually.
It is evident from this that the key to solve tho Pūrva problem lies in (B) above relevant to the karma theory and the mechanism of liberation, which are indeed bristled with all sorts of difficulties. Let us approach these problems one by one, being prepared for the unavoidable involvement with this and that of theoretical subject matters that require lengthy discussions.
What is the method of liberation is needless to say the fundamental thesis that any religious system in India proposes excluding the Carvakas, and it is necessarily based on the understanding why and how samsāra takes place. Mahāvira received Parsva's doctrine that violence committed to all the living beings packed in the world causes samsāra which must have been developed from the widely spread belief in animism and vaira in the remote past, and founded an independent school by reforming the old doctrine in terms of the philosophy and language of the days. And one of his great contributions was that he adopted the karma theory in the place of the primitive theory of vaira, which enabled him to explain and propagate the doctrine of non-violence in more theoretical fashion in terms of the then prevalent philosophy and language of the day.
JAINTHOLOGY,97
