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( 18 ) works of Sakatayana, Padmanandi, Hemachandra and others stand unrivalled in their usefulness and scientific brevity. In Prosody also they attained a very high level of development. The Prakrita language is shewn in all its mellifluous beauty in works of the Jainas; and it is a fact that the use of the Prakrita language in the Brahmanic dramas owes its inception to the Jainas who first used it in their literary works."
It is not that the Jaina works are written only in Sanskrit and Prakrita languages but we find that about seven hundred years ago, in order to reach the people, the old books were translated and new books written in Marathi, Hindi, Bengali and mainly in Gujarati languages by the Jainas themselves. There is no need to point out how much the Gujarati literature is indebted to the efforts of the Jaina authors. It may be mentioned in this connection that the oldest classical literatures of both the Kanarese and Tamil are composed by the Jainas,
... It will not be out of place to mention that the Jainas have a rich store of old and valuable manu. scripts both on palm and paper leaves in carefully preserved Bhandaras Dr. Bübler mentions a manuscript of the Avas"yaka Sutra, which bears the date 1132 A D., and is declared to be the oldest existing Sanskrit manuscript on paper
From the above remarks it must have been clear that the Jaina books are of importance not only because they throw light on the history and philosophy
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