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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
portions of the original canon could survive in the memory of certain eminent teachers.
Thanks to the Sarasvati Movement, launched about the middle of the second century B.C. and principally led by the Jaina saints of Mathurā, which began to bear fruit towards the end of the first century B.C., the Jaina gurus at last overcame their conservatism and their reluctance to take recourse to pen and paper.
The saints belonging to the section whcih came to be known as the Digambara, took the lead, redacted their part of the canon and wrote independent treatises on various topics epitomising or based on the corresponding subject matter in the traditional knowledge handed down to them orally in the circle of learned ascetics. Those belonging to the other section, later known as the Svetāmbara, however, continued to oppose writing for several centuries more, finally redacting their canonical traditions in the later half of the fifth century A.D. These two sects of the exact canonical texts together make up the more or less complete traditional Jaina canon, the Digambaras preserving in the Agama texts the bulk of the twelfth Anga and its Pūrvas together with fragments from the other Argas, while the Svetāmbaras in their 45 or so sūtras the substantial parts of the remaining eleven Angas and the Miscellanea. That both of them inherited and drew from the common stock which existed before the schism (circa 79 A.D.), dividing the Jaina Sargha into these two sects, is proved by many ancient verses and passages found common in the two sets of the early book literature of the Jainas. On phiological grounds many scholars are of opinion that portions of these texts may well be assigned to the 4th or 5th century B.C. The efforts of these pioneers, early authors and redactors of the canon, like Kundakunda Umāsvāti, Gunadhara, Dharasena and Devarddhi opened the flood gates for the tremendous
