Scientific Contents in Prakrta Canons

Author(s): N L Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 11

24. Female Arts
25. Number of Diseases
26. Medical Practices
27. Parts of the Body 28. Number of eatables/
dishes
29. Types of Food
30. Organs of Knowledge (Pramāņas)
[ IX ]
64 (with different names, now totalling 140)
7, 10, 16 (with different names, now totalling 64)
5 increasing upto 36 9, 32 (Acārānga ) 9,14,18
6, 8, 4
4,2 (with sub-classes)
Currently, this state of variability in scriptural contents could be clarified on at least five counts as below:
(a) Almost all the current scriptural and post-scriptural texts have been redacted and composed by sufficiently distant (upto 500 years or more after Mahāvira) saintly authors.
(b) Absence of transmission or communication between contemporary and other scholars and their literature in olden days with some exceptions.
(c) An attitude towards supporting traditionalism under incomplete or indirect informations.
(d) A gradual but continuous loss of memory and intuitional genius among the successive generations of scholars leading to variable understanding.
(e) Contemporary challenges and an attitude towards correspondence based on relativity principle.
It, thus, seems that each series of Mahāvira's near and distant disciples took his instructions in their own way though they were in popular language of the time and in simple allegorical style with reference to their contemporary correspondence. That is why, many later scholars felt many types of inconsistencies in scriptures. Most of them, however, preferred to keep silence to maintain them as such on the basis of nonviolability without venturing any elaboration. One could not say