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How Jains Know What They Know: A Lay Jain Curriculum
more than half-a-dozen commentaries written between the 14th and 17th centuries (Mehta and Käpaḍiyā 1968: 182).
The Dandaka Prakaraṇa, also known as the Vicarachattīsiyāsutta and the Laghusangrahaṇī, is a 44-verse Prakrit text authored in the 16th century by Gajasāra Muni (Mehta and Kāpaḍiyā 1968: 173-74), that partly overlaps in subject material with the Jivavicara. In it the author details the physical and mental qualities and abilities of living beings in the 24 possible life forms (dandaka): (1) hellish beings, (2-11) ten forms of heavenly beings, (12-16) five forms of single-sensed beings (with bodies of earth, water, fire, wind, and plant), (17-19) two-, three-, and four-sensed beings, (20) wombborn animals, (21) womb-born humans, and (22-24) vyantara, jyotiṣī and vaimānika deities.
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The fourth Prakarana is the 29-verse Jambūdvīpa Sangrahaṇī, also known as the Laghu Sangrahaṇī, attributed to Haribhadrasūri, although quite likely this is not the same as the one (or two) famous Haribhadras who lived in the formative years of Śvetambara philosophy. It provides an introduction to Jain geography, discussing the features and dimensions of the various lands, mountains, rivers, and other features in the middle, human-inhabited section universe.
These four texts together provide the reader with a detailed portrait of the physical universe as understood according to the Jain worldview. Much of the subject matter here is rather abstruse, consisting of long lists of categories and sub-categories that can make for tiresome reading. But without a firm grasp of these aspects of the Jain physical universe, the Jain moral universe and its expression in Jain praxis cannot be adequately understood.
Tribhāṣyas
The subject of Jain praxis is the next one treated in this reading list. The Tribhāṣyas, also known as the Bhāṣyatraya, are Prakrit commentaries by Devendrasuri on three of the avaśyakas, the daily rituals obligatory for all mendicants and recommended by many Jain intellectuals for the laity as well. Devendrasūri (d. 1271) was the disciple of Jagaccandrasūri, the founder of the Tapa Gaccha. It was Devendrasūri who established the intellectual foundations of the gaccha, and his texts remain central to
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