Studies in Jainology Prakrit Literature and Languages

Author(s): B K Khadabadi
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 91

Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
The earliest available Paumacariyam (a Laghu-Purāna) of Vimalasūri is in Prakrit. So far no Mahāpurāna in Prakrit has come to light. Camundaraya too does not specify the language in respect of any of the Mahāpurānas of his predecessors. In this work, he has quoted a few Prakrit verses, some being not traceable to their proper sources. Several Prakrit words nad phrases are found scattered in the course of its text. Hence it is possible that he might have passed his curious cye over onc or two Prakrit Mahāpurānas; and thery/it could be none else than these/this composed by the great Kuchibhattāraka and/or Srinandi- munīsvara.
I hope, such interesting findings arising from such brief critical account of the Jaina Purānas in Kannada might have now brought you home the importance of wider studies in this field. And the proposed Descriptive Master Catalogue world, no doubt, serve as the gate- way to such and other wider perspective and fruitful studies. Hence it is highly desirable that there should first come out individual Descriptive Catalogues of the Jaina Purānas in different possible languages, which all would then naturally lead to the constitution of the Master Catalogue.
Coming to the second point, amongst the biographies of the Salākāpurusas (Great Personages) of the Jaina Mahapurānas, particularly amongst those of the Tirthankaras (Ford-makers), Rsabhadeva has been given outstanding promincnce with far greater details of his life-history and with longer space alloted for the samc. Moreover the Jaina tradition preserved here, and also elsewhere, is unanimous and intact on Rasabhadevas being the first to preach the Ahimsādharma and higher values of life, to bring a good order in the society and to lay an ideal path to persection - the sum total of which all, later, came to be known as Jina- dharma.
In very old days we had, of course, no chroniclers or historians. The old and important factual events were preserved