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Seminar on Jajoism
Rsabha, the first of the Tirthankaras visited, among other countries, forkan, and southern Karnataka. This is why the social and economic condition of India reflected in the early Jain texts is likely to be more varied. Hence a study of the socio-economic data contained in these will not be mere repetitions of what is known from the Buddhist sources. However such a study suffers from two inherent limitations in the first place, the Jain canonical literature primarily refers to the Svetāmbara scriptures since the position of the texts of the Digambara sect still iemains to be determined. This literature was composed and compiled in different parts of the country at different times and by different persons. Hence without a rigid stratification according to chronology and region of composition of the data contained in these texts by means of comparative and critical method there will always be the possibility of projecting a condition prevalent at a later date as valid for an earliei epoch It is indeed not unlikely that some institution prevalent in west India in the fifth century A.D. may be interpreted as true of Magadha in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. In the second place, there is no systematic discussion in our texts of the social and economic organisation or condition of India. What information regarding these can be had is from casual references many of which are unique of their kind with the result that our knowledge of the socio. economic life from these texts is necessarily incomplete and any deduction from these will be, to say the least, hypothetical. In this small paper no attempt can be made at stratification of our terts. We shall remain content only with the presentation of certain informations which, according to persistant tradition, are associated with the Tirthankaras and their con. temporaries, religieux and laic.
As for social organisation, the system of castes is nowhere denied in the Jain texts. On the other hand, th: Sītrakstānga clearly mentions it as the very first of the eight objects of pride. The Avasyaka Sūtra equally enjoins that a real monk should not take pride ia cast distinction. However, the order
