Sambodhi 1973 Vol 02

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 26

K. X. Dixit
original Jaina scriptural texts had been gradually lost by the time the remaining VOC was given the form in which it is with us to-day and siace long. It can easily be seen that theoretically speaking the Digambara and Svetärnbara stands in Question were essentially similar, but the practical outcome was vastly diffetent in the case of these two. For in view of their specific stand it came about that the latter-day Svetānbura scholars endeavoured as best they could to preserve the oldest stratum of Jaina literature, For if this stratum is to be detected anywhere it is somewhere with the body of the texts treasured as Scripture by the Setälubara sub-sect. Of course, only too often did the latterday Sveta mbara scholars misread into an ancient text positions that were formulated in a considerably late period, but for this responsibility chiefly Les math that absence of a historical outlook which is so characteristic of Almost all medieval Indian authors of whatever hue. lo any case, it rema. is for a historical minded modern student of Jainism to show that if an Encient Jaina text contains a luter developed position it can at the most contain it in a seed forun. However, in this task too considerable belp cornes from those very commer tarles on these ancient texts which were written by the latter-day Svetambara schulars belonging to different historical periods, Naturally, the later Digambura scholars could not participate in the sacreu task of preserving the letter of the ancient Jaina texts in question, but by way of compensation as it were they did their utmost to preserve and propagate what they understood to be the spirit of those texts, an understanding which was almust wholly shared also by their Svetambara contemporaries. For this understanding emerged from the later developed classical Jaipa positions and su far as they were concerned there was little tu differentiate between the respective Diganbara and Svetāmbara stands pertaining to them.
Thus the latter-day Digambara scholars as well as the latter-day Śveranbera scholars were of the view that the positions defended by them had been expouaded in the original Jaina scriptural texts, but a differencewhich, as has been just noted, was trivial in one respect and not so in another - arose when the former further contended that in due course the texts in question were all lost and the latter that in due course they were largely lost, And the understanding pectaining to the gradual loss of the original scriptural texts was a part and parcel of a larger understanding to the effect that in our times the whole of human development is on the downgrade. For the classical Jaina scholars divided one round of the everrepeating time-cycle into an ascending half and a descending hall, the duration of each covering years whose number was of truly astronomical order; and it was believed by them that we are living in a period falling towards the close of the descending half of a particular round of timecycle that is, in a worst imaginable period of time. However, in the