Studies in Jainism

Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

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STUDIES IN JAINISM
THE JAINA CANON: AN ESTIMATE The language of these texts is called arşa by which is meant Ardha-Măgadhi. But it is not uniform in all the texts. The language of the Angas and a few other texts, such as the Uttaradhyayana, is evidently older and amongst them the Acaranga shows still more archaic forms. The language of the verses generally shows tendencies of an earlier age also. On the whole, the language of this Agama does not conform fully to the characteristics of any of the Prakrits described by the grammarians; but it shares something with each of them. Therefore Dr Jacobi called this language Old Māhārāștri or Jaina Māhārāștri. But this designation has not been accepted and it is simpler and better to call it by its traditional name Ardha-Māgadhi
Though the contents are quite varied and cover a wide range of human knowledge conceived in those days, the subject-matter of this canonical literature is mainly the ascetic practices of the followers of Mahāvīra. As such, it is essentially didactic dominated by the supreme ethical principle of ahimsā. But, subject to that, there is a good deal of poetry and philosophy as well as valuable information about contemporary thought and social history including biographical details of Pārsvanātha, Mahāvīra, and their contemporaries. Many narrative pieces, such as those found in the Uttaradhyayana, are interesting and instructive and remind one of the personalities and events in the Upanişads and the Pali texts. From the historical point of view, the life of Mahāvira in the Ācāränga, information about his predecessors and contemporaries in the Vyakhya-prajñapti or Bhagavati and the Upāsaka-dasaka, about his successors in the Kalpa-Sūtra, and about monachism practised in the days of Mahāvīra in eastern India in Dasa-vaikālika are all very valuable.
THE COMMENTARIES ON THE JAINA CANON A vast literature of commentaries has grown round the Āgamas themselves. The earliest of these works are the niryuktis, attributed to Bhadrabāhu. They explain the topics systematically in Prakrit verse, and elaborate them