Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 24

MODERN JAINISM.
The Digambara refuse to acknowledge the work of the Council of Pataliputra and say that the original sacred books have been lost.
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The manuscripts authorized by the first council eventually grew scarce and fell into disorder, and so a second great council was held at Vallabhi, in Gujarat, under the presidency of Devarddhi, the head of one of the schools, which revised them and thus fixed the Svetambara canon of the scriptures.
This, briefly, is the account given by Dr. Hoernle of the historic Jaina tradition of their own history and sacred books, and he goes on to show how in 1896 most striking corroboration of the early date of the great schism was found by Prof. Bühler when deciphering the inscriptions in Madura.
The modern Jaina tradition however in Western India differs slightly from this account, and I am indebted to a learned Jaina gentleman for the following particulars.
He agrees with Dr. Hoernle as to the cause of the complete divergence between the Svetambara and Digambara sects, and holds that under Mahavira there had been two sections, the Jinakalpi (se), who were very rigid in their observance of the rule, and the Sthivarakalpi (en), who owing to old age or illness were allowed to relax the rule so far as to wear clothes and to eat delicacies.
The Svetambara canon was not committed to writing + for 980 years after the death of Mahavira, then, under the
Annual Address, A. S. B. 1898. p. 47 ff.
+ A Jaina Sadhu has kindly supplied me with the following legend
as to the cause of the Svetämbara scriptures being committed to
.