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A Short History of Jaina Law upāsakādhyayana, lessons for the layman, are used as generic terms only by the Digambaras who claim that the original Upāsakādhyayana is lost, while the Svetāmbaras preserved the Uvāsagadasāo (Sanskrit Upāsakadaśāḥ or Upāsakādhyayana), the only canonical text exclusively devoted to the concerns of the laity. The Sanskrit term nīti-śāstra is used as a designation for both texts on statecraft and political ethics (rāja-nīti) and for texts on morality and rules for ethical conduct in everyday life (sāmānya-nīti). Together, the śrāvakācāras and the nītiśāstras form the Jaina equivalent of the Hindu dharmaśāstras. But their focus is more on ethics and ritual than on statecraft and personal law, which are traditionally kept outside the religious law and left to local custom, deśācāra, which Jains are advised to observe if there is no conflict with the dharma.
Jaina texts on kingship, statecraft and personal law were composed in contexts where individual Jain mendicants exercised personal influence over one or other 'Hindu' king or local official. The majority of the texts were created by monks of the Digambara which had a sustained influence on the ruling dynasties in the Deccan between the 8th-12th centuries. The most significant Jaina works on statecraft are the Adipurāņa of Ācārya Jinasena (ca. 770-850 C.E.) and the Nītivākyāmrtam (ca. 950 C.E.) and the Yaśastilaka (959 C.E.) of Ācārya Somadeva Sūri. Both authors were associated with the rulers of the Rāstrakūta empire. The Adipurāņa belongs to the genre of universal history. It tells the life story of the first Jina, the legendary first king and law-giver Rşabha, in the manner of a Jaina Mahābhārata, and for the first time offers blueprints for Jaina social rituals and Jaina kingship through the Jainization of Brāhmanical prototypes. The Nītivākyāmstam, by contrast, is an entirely secular text on statecraft modeled on the Arthaśāstra of Kautilya (ca. 3rd century B.C.E. - 1st century C.E.) with barely noticeable emphasis on Jaina morality. The most influential medieval Svetāmbara text concerning the laity is the Yogaśāstra and its auto-commentary by Hemacandra (12th C.E.) who was closely linked with King Kumārapāla of the western Cālukya dynasty in Gujarat. The first Svetāmbara text detailing life-cycle rituals is the Ācāradinakara of Vardhamānasūri of the Kharatara Gaccha (1411 C.E.).
While Jaina concepts of kingship and statecraft were never systematically implemented and considered obsolete already under Muslim rule, Jaina ethics is still evolving. Scripted liturgical and life-cycle rituals left their mark both on the ritual culture of the Jainas and on the customs of contemporary 'Jaina castes' which, though purely 'secular' from a purely doctrinal perspective, emerged in the medieval period generally through the conversion of local rulers by Jaina monks. Compilations of Jaina law' texts produced by modern Jaina reformers in the 19th and early 20th centuries focused exclusively on the only legal domain which was initially exempted from codified Anglo-Hindu law, that is the rules of Jaina 'personal law concerning the role of property in contexts of marriage, adoption, succession, inheritance, and partition. At the centre of concern was the division of property, or dāya-vibhāgam. Medieval Digambara texts with chapters on 'personal law' are the
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