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CHRONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
OF JAIN LITERATURE
Satya RANJAN BANERJEE
In the following pages an attempt has been made to put all the main literary records and big events which have taken place in the history of Jainism into a simple chronological order. In order to show the events of Jainism in the context of world culture, I have started the chronology for the period from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 2000. It is my intention to show that from this series of charts, one can very quickly see when any particular work was written or what other events took place at the same time in the same period. This chart will help the scholars, I believe, to look at the events at a glance.
The six thousand years (from 4000 B.C. to 2000 A.D.) have been broken up into several historical periods of India. These periods have been calculated in accordance with the historical periods of India. These historical periods of India are taken from the History and Culture of the Indian People by R.C. Majumdar which was published by the Bhāratiya Vidyā Bhavana, Bombay, in several volumes, from 1950 onwards. Most of the historical dates used in this dissertation are taken from the above book. Apart from this book, the History of Indian Literature, Vol.II, by Maurice Winternitz, Calcutta University, 1933, has also been consulted for the dates of Jain works and authors. Besides these, the three books of H.R. Kapadia, namely, History of the Canonical Literature of the Jains (Bombay, 1941),Jain Religion and Literature, Vol.I, part 1 (Lahore, 1944), and Jinaratnakoşa, Vol.I,
