________________
66
Śramaņa, Vol 60, No. 1/January-March 2009
preserved for us numerous Indian tales that otherwise would have been lost. Kāvyas and Mahākāvyas too, of renowned merit have been composed by Jaina poet ācāryas. Lyrical and didactic poetry are also well represented in the literature of the Jainas.
Apart from these, the most valuable contributions have been made by the Jainas to the Indian scientific and technical literature on various subjects like logic, philosophy, poetics, grammar, lexicography, astronomy, astrology, geography, mathematics and medicine. The Jainas have paid special attention to the arthaśāstra (or Economics) which is considered to be a worldly science" par excellence. Thus there is hardly any branch of science that has not been ably treated by the Jainas.
The literature of the Jainas is also very important from the point of view of the history of Indian languages for the Jainas always took care that their writings were accessible even to the masses of the people. Hence the canonical writings and the earliest commentaries are written in Prakrit dialects and at a later period Sanskrit and various modern Indian languages were used by the Jainas. That is why it is not an exaggeration when the famous Indologist H.H. Wilson says that every province of Hindustan can produce Jaina compositions either in Sanskrit or in its vernacular idioms. It is an established fact that the Jainas have enriched various regional languages and especially Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu.
Regarding the Jaina contribution to Kannada literature, the great Kannada scholar R. Narasimhacharya has given his considered opinion in the terms that: “The earliest cultivators of the Kannada language were Jainas. The oldest works of any extent and value that have come down to
us are all from the pen of the Jainas. The period of the Jaina's' predominance in the literary field may justly be called the 'Augustan Age of Kannada Literature'. Jaina authors in Kannada are more numerous than in Tamil. To name only a few, we have Pampa, Ponna, Ranna, Gunavarman, Nagachandra, Nayasena, Nagavarman, Aggala, Nemichandra, Janna, Andayya, Bandhuvarma and Medhura, whose works are admired as excellent specimens of poetical composition. It is only in Kannada that we have a Rāmāyaṇa and a Bhārata based on the Jaina tradition in addition to those based on Brahmanical tradition. Besides, kavyas written by Jaina authors, we have numerous works by them dealing with subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, prosody, mathematics, astrology, medicine, veterinary science, cookery and so forth. In all the number of Jaina authors in Kannada is nearly two hundred”.
As the Jainas have produced their vast literature in these languages from very ancient times, they have certainly played a very important part in the development of the different languages of India. The medium of sacred writings and preachings of the Brahmins has all along been Sanskrit and that of the Buddha's Pāli. But the Jainas alone utilized the prevailing languages of the different places, besides Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhramsa, for their religious propagation as well as for the preservation of knowledge. It is thus quite evident that the Jainas occupy an important position in the history of the literature and civilization of India. Arts and Architecture
Along with literature the Jainas have always contributed considerably to the development of the arts in the country. In Jaina
