________________
perfection and unmixed eternal bliss, whence there is no return to samsara or the mundane existence.
In the current cycle of time, this truth was realised, practised and preached, one after the other, by twenty-four Jinas or Shramana Nirgrantha Tirthankaras, from Adinatha Rishabhadeva of the hoary antiquity down to Vardhamana Mahavira (599-527 B.C.), the last of them. Born in B.C. 599, he renounced worldly life at the age of 30, and practised the most austere ascetic discipline to purify his spiritual self for the next 12 years, consequently attaining kevala-jnana (enlightenment in B.C. 557, when he started delivering His sermons for the good of all the living beings. His chief disciple or Ganadhara, Indrabhuti Gautama, listened to and grasped the import of His divine sermons, which he compiled and codified in substance, in the form of the Dradashanga-shruta (twelvelimbed canon). The twelfth Anga, Drishti-pravada, and more especially its Purvagata section comprising fourteen Purvas, dealt in detail with the doctrinal aspects of the Jina's Teachings, including the Doctrine of karma.
After Mahavira's Nirvana, in B.C. 527, this orişinal canonical knowledge started flowing, by word of mouth, through a succession of authoritative and competent gurus. But, it could remain intact only upto B.C. 365, when with the demise of the last Shruta-kevalin, Bhadrabahu I, it began to dwindle gradually in volume as well as substance. Notwithstanding a continuous and alarming decline in the canonical knowledge, Jaina gurus being possessionless forest recluses, conservative in their attitude and averse to writing, continued to resist, for the next three centuries or so, all attempts at redaction of the surviving shrutagama. About B.C. 150, Kharavela, the celebrated Jaina monarch of Kalinga (Orissa), convened at the Kumari Parvat a big religious conference which was attended by Jaina monks from all over India. The question of canonical redaction was naturally posed at this holy gathering. Although, this attempt bore no immediate fruit, the monks from Mathura, on their return from Kalinga, started the Sarasvati Movement in order to prepare the ground for the redaction, and, by the latter half of the first century B.C., the Jaina saints of the Dakshinapatha (southern India) came forward to take up the challenge. Bhadrabahu II (B.C. 37-14), Lohacharya (B.C.14-A.D.38), Kundakunda (B.C.8-A.D.44), Vattakera and several others did not wait for the redaction proper and started writing treatises on more relevant topics, based on the extant surviving portions of the shruta-agama. In this genial atmosphere Gunadhara, Dharasena, probably Vattakera also, agreed readily to redactor get redacted the more important portions of the original canon, of which they happened to be the authentic repositories at the time.
18 / Satkhandagama-parisheelan
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
