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AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS STUDIED IN RAJASTHAN FROM THE EIGHTH TO THE THIRTEENTH CENTURIES A. D.
Dr. Dasaratha Sarma, Krisna Nagar. Delhi,
Our information about the subjects and authors studied in Rajasthan, and specially the Chauhan dominions, cannot be regarded as exhaustive. We have no Brahmanic sources worth mentioning except the Sarngadharapaddhati which falls a little outside our period, being the work of the grandson of Raghavadēva, a court-poet and Pandit of Hammira of Ranthambhor. Yet the position is not so unsatifactory, as it appears to be at first sight, for the Jains, while naturally devoting the greatest attention to their own system, studied the philosophic works of others, and tried also to view with non-Jains in the knowledge of secular subjects like poetics and drama, with the result that their Bhandars have preserved invaluable books and their commentaries which, but for their care, would have been lost to posterity. In India few have served the cause of Sarasvati so well as the Jain custodians of the big bhanḍārs at Pattan, Jaisalmer and Bikānēr.
Subjects Studied
From the Ganadharasārdhasatakabrhadvrtti, we learn that a good Jain scholar was expected to master his own Siddhanta along with the philosophic systems of the Buddhists and Brahmanas. He read besides classical poetry, prose and drama, astronomy and astrology, poetics, prosody and grammar. He had specially to be an adept in propounding his own theories and refuting the views of the rival schools.1
Jain Agama:-We can fill up this outline from the brhadvrtti itself and also other contemporary Jain sources. The siddhanta included the 11 angas, 12 upangas, 6 chhedasūtras, 4 mulasūtras, 10 prakirnakas, and 2 other sutras, the Anuyogadvarasutra and Nandisutra. To these some add Bhadrabahu's 12 niryuktis, the Viseṣavasyakabhāṣya, twenty
1. Quoted in the introduction to the art, p. 20.
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