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RECONCILIATION,
1079
great number of yerses ; some remaining in pupilage as long as twenty years ; and this though writing was freely used for secular purposes.
This then was a common practice with mankind, and the Jainas were no exception to the rule as every scholar of note now admits. According to Mr. Barth (see the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, Vol. III, p. 90, quoted in the Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXII, Intro. p. XXXV), the Jaina Canon existed for nearly a thousand years before it was reduced to writing. Jaina tradition, too, is quite explicit on the point, and itself fixes the date of the redaction of the Books, adding that before that time teachers made no use of books when teaching the Siddhanta to novices, but after that time they did.
Thus, both Hinduism and Jainism had their literature preserved in the same way, and it is evident that priority in point of time with reference to the date of redaction can be no test of greater antiquity between them, since it is conceivable that a more recent creed might resort to writing at an earlier date than the one that is more ancient. Besides this, it is possible for an earlier system when reduced to writing to exhibit strong linguistic traits that are suggestive of later development. This is bound to happen where the rivalry is between an earlier scientific system and a later poetical one; for while the very expression and wording of the latter is fixed rigidly and unalterably once for all at the moment of its composition, the former cannot but be reduced to writing in the language current on the date of its redaction. This is precisely what has happened in the case of the Jaina Siddhanta which had a
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