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LITERATURE
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subjects of poetry taken up by it are not Brāhmaṇic myths and legends, but popular tales, fairy stories, fables and parables. It likes to insist on the misery and sufferings of samsāra, and it teaches a morality of compassion and ahimsā, quite distinct from the ethics of Brāhmanism with its ideals of the great sacrificer and generous supporters of the priests, and its strict adherence to the caste system... We see, then, that in the sacred texts of the Jainas a great part of the 'ascetic literature of ancient India is embodied, which has also left its traces in Buddhist literature as well as in the Epics and purāņas. Jaina literature, therefore, is closely connected with the other branches of post Vedic religious literature.".
These significant remarks of the learned historian of Indian literature need no comment except that Sramana is a peculiarly Jaina term used to denote a Jaina ascetic, Lord Mahāvīra himself is usually mentioned as Samana Bhagavam Mahāvīre in ancient Jaina texts. As a matter of fact, in very early times the Jaina ascetics were called Ārhatas, in the post-Vedic period they were known as Sramaņas, also sometimes as Vrātyas, and in the times of Pārsva and Mahāvīra the term nirgrantha also came into use for them, but the most popular designation has been the Sramaņa. So, there is no doubt that the so-called parivrājaka, ascetic or Sramaņa literasture of the Vedic and post-Vedic times was nothing else but the earlier Jaina lore represented in the main by the Pūrvas, Pratham-ānuyoga and other sections of the twelfth Anga. The characteristic features of that early Ascetic literature, as detailed by Winternitz and other scholars, also tally more exactly with Jainism than with any other system. The whole of the knowledge contained in the Angas and Pūrvas was kept intact for about two hundred years after the nirvāņa of Mahāvīra, when it began to suffer losses and dwindle in volume gradually. The result was that by the beginning of the Christian era only a partial knowledge of the more relevant
