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How Jains Know What They Know: A Lay Jain Curriculum
(1968: 167-70) list several other texts by the same name, none of which is very widely known.
Tattvärthasūtra (Tattvärthädhigamasutra)
The 350-verse Sanskrit Tattvärthasūtra by Umāsvāti (c. 4th century) is the most famous of the texts on this list, and the one that clearly would be included in anybody's reading list of essential Jain texts1o. This was the first systematic presentation of Jain doctrine (and in fact went a long way toward creating this systematization) for a pan-Indian audience in the pan-Indian scholarly language of Sanskrit and the pan-Indian genre of sastra, and so provides a suitable summary of the basics of that doctrine. Starting out with a definition of Jainism as the path to liberation (mokṣamārga) consisting of correct faith, knowledge, and conduct (samyagdarśana, samyagjñāna, and samyakcäritra), Umäsväti then proceeds to outline the Jain understandings of cosmology, ontology, karmic bondage, and liberation. The text itself consists of short, cryptic aphorisms, and so is nearly unintelligible without a commentatory. Dozens of them have been composed over the centuries, starting with one that the Svetämbara tradition ascribes to Umāsvāti himself. Almost every edition of the text will contain one or more commentaries, some of them older, well-known commentaries in Sanskrit, others more recent vernacular commentaries. Each commentator has leaned heavily on the preceding commentaries, and so any given edition essentially comprises over one thousand years of accumulated tradition. Concluding Comments
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This curriculum provides the reader with everything he or she needs to be both an orthodox Jain, who has both samyagdarśana or correct faith in the verity of the Jain worldview, and samyagjñāna or a correct intellectual understanding of the technical specifics of that worldview. It also provides everything needed to be an orthoprax Jain, who is engaged in samyakcäritra and so performs correct ritual conduct in response to that worldview.
By reading the Tattvärthasūtra and the Navatattva, one will gain an understanding of Jain metaphysics. By reading the various Sangrahaṇī and Kṣetrasamäsa texts, in addition to the Tattvärthasutra, one will learn the complex Jain theories of cosmology; this Jain vision of a vast universe of souls in bondage underlies the urgency with which Jain teachers urge
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