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The Fordmakers
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This story, drastically truncated here, would in essence be recognisable to all Jains, although the Digambaras reject certain elements of it such as the transfer of Mahâvîra's embryo and his marriage to Yashoda. In its broadest form, it is located in the versions of the Universal History produced by the Digambara poet Jinasena (ninth century CE) and his pupil Gunabhadra and the Shvetambaras Shilanka (ninth century CE) and Hemacandra (twelfth century CE) who drew upon themes scattered throughout the earlier scriptural tradition which had doubtless also been elaborated orally. When examined critically as a literary phenomenon, the Universal History in its widest extent gives the impression of being a massive introduction to the biography of Mahâuîra which itself expanded and evolved over a long period of time. We must now consider some of the features of that biography and the manner in which it presents a picture of Mahâvîra as exemplar of the Jain path.
The Sources For Mahâvîra's Biography
An account of the nature and development of the Jain scriptures will be given in Chapter 3, but we may anticipate two points here. Firstly, the Shvetambara sources alone must be relied upon for an understanding of the earliest stages of Mahâvîra's biography, for the Digambara scriptures provide no significant early evidence. Secondly, the accounts of the Council of Valabhi, which took place in the first half of the fifth century CE and at which the Shvetambara scriptures were supposedly redacted for the final time, provide no help with regard to the dating of the actual sources involved. While we may be reasonably confident about the most important texts redacted at Valabhi, we can only establish a relative chronology for them on the basis of language, metre and the evidence of style. The datings which I adduce for the Shvetambara scriptures are therefore tentative. although deriving from what has become a scholarly consensus.
Generally accepted as being the oldest parts of the Shvetambara scriptures are the first books of the first and second ‘limbs' (anga) of the canon, called the Acaranga (AS), because it relates to behaviour (acara), and the Sutrakritanga (SKS), probably so named because it describes the doctrines found in the writings (sutra) of those sects whom the Jains regarded as their opponents.
