Sacred Literature of Jains

Author(s): Ganeshchandra Lalwani, Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Jain Bhawan

Page 14

SACRED LITERATURE OF THE JAINS
date of Asoka, had, as we have seen above, been able to collect the 11 angas only in a rather indifferent fashion by acquiring one portion from one quarter, another from another (yad angādhyayanoddeśādy āsid yasya); and of the twelfth anga had been able to acquire only a part from Bhadrabāhu. The existence of what had thus been collected, was, as time went on, endangered from the fact that its transmission was only oral ;18 for which, according to tradition, writing was not substituted till eight centuries later, in the year 980 Vira. This was effected by a council in Valabhi under the presidency of Devarddhigaội Kşamasamaņa; though others state that this ensued 13 years aíter (993 Vira) at the hands of a council in Mathura under Sri Skandilācārya. In connection with this the statement may be placed that in the year 980 the Valabhi king Dhruvasena commanded that the Kalpasūtram should be recited publicly. Herein a special participation of the king in the work is indicated, be it in that of Devarddhigaội or in that of Skandila, to whom by this act he gave decisive support.
If, then, as a matter of fact in the interval of 800 or 1000 (980) years after Vira, 'the doctrines whose contents were promulgated by him (though the form of the doctrines is ascribed to his pupils and not to the master himself) were handed down by oral tradition aloneand in unison with this assumption is the fact that just in the older portions of the text we find the introductory formula [219) suyaṁ me āusam, teņam bhagavayā evam akkhāyam as well as for the single sections the concluding formula ti bemi - then we may well be astonished that the existing Siddhānta contains so many traces of antiquity, as is the case. What knowledge would we possess of Christ if the New Testament had existed in an unwritten form till 980 A.D.,19 and if we were limited to a codification of traditions under Pope Sylvester II, which was based not on written, but on oral transmission !
Truly, in this interval the cultivation of the sacred text had not been entirely abandoned. So, for example, to the 19th patriarch, Vajra, is ascribed particular solicitude in its behalf20 cf. Kup. 811(21). According to the statement of the Digambaras, cf. Jacobi, Kalpas, p. 30, the written codification of their sacred texts had been effected
18 purvam sarvasiddhamanām pāthanam ca mukhapathenai 'va'sit. Jacobi, Kalpas,
p. 117, from the Kal padruma of Lakşmidhara. 19 Or 950, as we reckon from the birth of Christ, the Jainas from the death of Vira. 20 Cf. also the accounts which exist in reference to anga 1, 1, 9.