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Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
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country.
Moreover, of the six duties to be carried out daily by the Śrāvaka, viz., Pujā (worship, prayer etc.,) Vārtā (the exercise of honest livelihood), Dāna (alms-giving) Svadhyāya (self-study of the scriptural and other religious works), Samyama (practising self-restraint and observing vows) and Tapa (penance like fast, Pratikramana etc.,), Svādhyāya represents an important educational tenet in the sense that it makes the layman or laywoman indulge in an ideal type of self-study daily. This can be explained just by merely enumerating the constituent parts of act of Svadhyāya; Vacanā (reading), Praśna or Prochā (questioning), Parivartana (repetition, revision), Anupreksā (meditating and reflecting) and Dharmakathā (listening to or relating religious story). Hence, there would be no exaggeration if it is remarked that the way of life prescribed by Jainism for the pious layman and laywoman, represents a perennial stress on self-education on the part of each member in the community.
Now we must take into account a very important contribution of the Jaina Acāryas to the cause of education in general. Though the Jaina teachers did not build great educational institutions, they have composed and left for posterity a great number of treatises on many different subjects which have been serving as valuable means of higher education for the last several centuries. Their contribution to the disciplines of metaphysics, ethics, logic, philosophy, poetry, grammar, lexicography is considered as excellent and, at times, unparallelled. The works of Umsavami, Kundakunda, Siddhasena, Haribhadra, Jinasena, Udyotana, Somadeva, Hemacandra etc, are accepted as valuable gems in the syllabi of several modern Universities in India and abroad. Moreover the Jaina Syādvāda (Doctrine of seven-fold Predication) has been estimated to be a rare asset of Indian thinking. Similarly, it is the Jaina teachers and monks who, with devoted efforts eultivated and gave literary status to the south Indian languages like Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. This historical phenomenon also contains an
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