Sacred Literature of Jains

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

Page 26

18
SACRED LITERATURE OF THE JAINS
This enumeration transplants us with tolerable certainty to a period from the second to the fourth century A.D., which is the most ancient period in which the enumeration can have originated, though the present texts may be much later. The mention made of the Arabians among the list, in the form ārava, which has yet not been discovered as occuring elsewhere in India, might lead us to suppose that we had to deal with a period far posterior to that delimited above. This could, however, be the case only on the supposition that the Arabians of Islam are referred to. It is my opinion that a reference to an anteIslamic period (in which Arabia and India were closely connected by commercial ties), is as fully justified as a reference to the Islamic period. From the mention of this peculiar denomination of the Arabians, which as before said appears here for the first time in the history of Indian literature, I conclude that the first author of the enumeration in question lived in a part of India in which the commercial connections with Arabia were very close, that is to say, on the west coast. The mention made of the seven schisms in angas 3, the last of which occured in the year 584 Vira, compels us to regard the second century A.D. as the extreme limit a' qua for the composition of the texts of the Siddhānta. We have therefore to conclude that the period from the second to the fifth century is the period to which their composition must be relegated.
The other dates, which we can extract from thę texts, are in agreement with this delimitation of the period of their origin, of special importance are the references in the angas to the corpus of Brahmanical secular literatures [238] which existed at the time, see Bhagav. 1. 441 ; 2. 446 8. Then too the use of the word anga to denote the oldest portions or the chief group of the Siddhānta43 deserves attention, and makes probable the assumption that the period of their orgin is the same as that to which belong the Brahmanical angas and upāngas, often alluded to in their most ancient portions. The second of those two names (upāngas) has been adopted by the Jains as the title of the second chief group of their texts. I have already called attention to
43 The Buddhists in the case of the chief group of their own scriptures make use of
the word sutra to denote a class of literature of somewhat ancient date. The word sutra occurs also in the colophons of the Jaina Siddhanta and plays a very important role in the Scholia ; yet is never used in the texts themselves with the same significance as among the Buddhists, if we except the Anuyogadvāras and Avasy. nijjutti together with that section of anga 12 which has the specific title of suttaim. See Bhag. 1, 441, 2, 196, 247 and Vorles. über Ind. Lit. Gesch.2 316. The style of some of the oldest parts of the Siddhānta reminds us in a very slight degree of that of the later Brahmanical sutra. In reference to the connection, of somewhat problematic character, between sämāyika or sāmāyāri and sama yācārika, see later on under anga 1, or in Uttaradhy. 16.