Narrative Tale in Jain Literature

Author(s): Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Asiatic Society

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NARRATIVE TALE IN JAIN LITERATURE
the popular story chosen for being transformed into a Jātaka does not contain such a moral action, this story must be altered accordingly. To a Bauddha, the study of arthaśāstra, or political science, is a sin. Now many of the best Indian stories have been developed in this śāstra. The Bauddha monks take over into their collections of stories a great many of such niti-tales; but in accordance with their principle, they are compelled to alter the very points, and consequently even the most essential features, of these stories, and by doing so, they inevitably must destroy the stories themselves.5 It is not a mere chance that amongst the innumerable recensions of the Panchatantra there is not even one of Bauddha origin, whereas the Jaina recensions, called Panchakhyāna, or Panchakhyānaka, made this old niti-work popular all over India, including Indo-China and Indonesia. The Pañchakhyāna, in Sanskrit and in different vernaculars, became indeed so popular a book in all these countries, that its Jain origin was completely forgotten, even by the Jains themselves.
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"The Bauddha story-tellers, moreover, turn to their advantage the rage of the populace for the miraculous, the horrid, and the atrocious; they repeat, over and over again, the same motives in the same stories, and they have no idea of psychological motivation and causation. Their stories are characteristic Buddhist, but by no means characteristic Indian stories.
"Characteristic of Indian narrative art are the narratives of the Jains. They describe the life and the manners of the Indian population in all its different classes, and in full accordance with reality. Hence Jain narrative literature is, amongst the huge mass of Indian literature, the most precious source not only of folk-lore in the most comprehensive sense of the word, but also of the history of Indian civilisation.
"The Jains' way of telling their tales differs from that of
5. See the author's papers 'Die Erzählungsliteratur der Jaina' (Geist des Ostens I, 178ff.) and ‘Ein attindisches Narrenbuch' (Ber. d. Kgl. Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, ph. - h. Kl. 64 (1912), Heft 1).