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INTRODUCTION."
CXXIII
Pischel's designation viz., Jaina S'aurasenī, is sufficiently significant; and it need not be changed, simply for the sake of changing it.
HISTORICAL BACK-GROUND OF JAINA S'AURASENI.-Is it possible to outline the historical back-ground and the circumstances, that might have been responsible for the shaping of the Jaina S'auraseni dialect? A couple of centuries after the nirvana of Mahāvīra, as a result of the severe famine that is said to have taken place in Magadha, a portion of the Jaina community, under¦: the leadership of Bhadrabahu, migrated to the South; and this has been the historical starting point of Jainism in South India. The Jainas, that migrated to the South, could conveniently stick up to their ascetic practices; but those, that remained behind, became slack, to a great extent, due to difficult days of famine. At the end of the famine, the members of the ascetic community in the North convened a samgha for the restoration of the sacred canon, as so many monks, who were the repositories of the sacred lore, had been the victims of famine. It was at Pataliputra that the canon was shaped, as it was then available from the various monks that had survived the famine. This canon, naturally, being shaped wholly by those that were remaining in the North and who had apparently slackened their ascetic practices, was not acceptable to those that had migrated to the South. Here is the visible seed of the division of the Jaina church under the denominations of S'vetämbara and Digambara, as they came to be known later on. It was a practical step, on the part of the S'vetambaras, that they tried to restore the sacred texts as much as it was possible under the then prevailing circumstances; and it is this canon, after passing through various vicissitudes, that was committed to writing, almost as it is to-day, under Devarddhigani, at Valabhi, in the year 983 after the nirvāna, of Mahavira. The Digambaias, in their zeal for the genuine canon, did neither restore it themselves, nor could they accept the canon as shaped by the Pataliputra samgha, with the result that the community, as a whole, came to lose the sacred canon. But, when we take into consideration the ancient method of study, that the teachers and pupils relied more on their memories than on the material accessories of knowledge like MSS. etc., it is imaginable that the leading teachers among the Digambaias, in the South, might have utilised, on such an occasion, the knowledge of what they had studied from the teachers; and, to satisfy the religious needs of the community in the they might have composed small treatises, not as the sacred canon, WTH they understood that term, was lost beyond recovery, but as mere mus otes of what they had received traditionally from their teachers; and it is to this class of literature that the works of authors like Puspadanta, Bhutabali, Vattakera, Kundakunda and S'ivarya belong. Their works are written in a language, which inherited many dialectal characteristics of AMg., in which the traditional canon was originally preserved; why, between the works of these authors and the works of the S'vetambara canon, we have many common ideas, nay common verses; these common verses do not imply
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1 South Indian Jainism chap. II; Ardhamagadhi Reader xl etc.
2 The problem raised by the common verses between Mülacara and Avas'yaka-niryukli ✨ and between Prakirṛalas and Bhagavati Ārāthanü will be taken up in a separate paper.
