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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETĀMBARA JAINISM
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around Jain literature delineating the names and careers of future tīrthankaras in general, Mahāpadma's interest to devotees always seems to have been comparatively restricted and he has now, and apparently had in the past, no significant part to play in practical religiosity. 68 Indeed, it would be most awkward were he required to provide some sort of devotional focus, for he is currently languishing in hell working out the consequences of negative karma accumulated in previous existences. In fact, it is Sīmandhara, the tīrthankara of Mahāvideha, who represents a closer Jain parallel to Maitreya. Of the four categories Jan Nattier has posited as typical of the various ways in which Maitreya has been represented throughout Buddhist civilisation in Asia, that of "there/now," in the sense of the future Buddha living in his Tuşita heaven and yet in some way being accessible "at this very moment" to the faithful, as most famously in the case of the great Yogācāra teacher Asanga, seems to correspond reasonably closely to the role medieval Jainism assigned to Sīmandhara.69 Although Nattier characterises contact with Maitreya as the result of mystical or visionary but nonetheless direct experience, while the Svetāmbara Jain sources suggest that of those not actually (re)born in the continent of Mahāvideha only goddesses could have immediate access to Sīmandhara,7° there is a clear point of contact between the two figures in a common role of helpers and inspirers of scholars and interpreters of the doctrine. 71
However, for our purposes, the most noteworthy point that emerges from the hagiographies is the centrality of scriptural commentary. The two main versions of Abhayadeva's life suggest that the real danger to the Jain community was perceived as lying not so much in the loss of the scriptures themselves (Prabhācandra makes clear that there were in existence at the time specialists familiar with their wording) as in the disappearance, whether from the effects of institutional disruption through famine or a decline in scholarly standards within the Jain ascetic community, of the commentarial tradition which enabled the scriptures to be understood.72 According to Prabhācandra, the problem was unconnected with doctrinal complexity but instead resulted from the often obscure Prākrit in which the sūtras were written. While his reference to difficult regional (desī) words in the texts in part reflects the statements of contemporary, sometimes secular Prākrit writers who express doubts about the ability of their audience to cope with the lexical exotica which had been a stylistic feature of Mahārāstrī Prākrit poetry since the time of Hala's Sattasaī,73 there does exist evidence that the Jain scriptures had become increasingly inaccessible from the early medieval period. 74 Thus, Prabhācandra can describe them as being
