Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): J L Jaini, F W Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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OUTLINES OF JAINISM
Devarddhi gamin, nearly eight hundred years later, about 454 A.D. Eighty-four works were now recognized : forty-one Sūtras, thirty Paimas (or Prakirnukus, or mclassified works), twelve Viryuktis (or commentaries), and one Jahābhūshya. The forty-one Sūtras contain the eleven digus (according to the Digambaras they are lost), twelve Upangas, five Chhedus, tive Mūlus, and eight miscellaneous, of which one is the kalpa Sūtra of Bhadra-bālu, translated by Dr. Jacobi in the Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxii.
The Digambaras seem to hold that their sacred books came to be written after the Vikrama year 114, or A.D. 57, when the almost total extinction of men learned in the Angas made it necessary to have the sacred lore reduced to writing. And then they took down, according to the remembered words spoken by Mahävira and the Kevalins who followed him, the scriptures relating to the seven tattrus, the nine padārthus, the six dravyas, the five austikāyas, the hells, the heavens, the siddha-kshetras, the madleyu-loku with its many seas and continents, the jūras with their classes, and the eighty-four lakhs (= 8,400,000) of conditions in the cycle of existences.
As to the later history of these scriptures, the Jaina tradition proceeds to relate that they were sunk in boatfuls by Sankara Acharya (A.D. 788-820) about the Vikrama year 816 (A.D. 789). Some of the books, however, were saved in Nepal in the North, in Sravana Belgola (Mysore), and in the Mewar country by pious Rājās and Mahā-rājas. After Sankara Achārya's death
i Professor Jacobi would correct this date to 514 .D.