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Tattvartha Sutra was written at Pataliputra, modern Patna in Bihar in northern India. Umasvati has been credited with the authorship of five hundred works: only a few of those ascribed to him are still extant.
Despite the uncertainty about its origin one thing is certain, the Tattvartha Sutra is one of the most important religious texts of the Jains, respected and widely read by Svetambara and Digambara alike. Indeed it has (with some exaggeration) been compared with the Qur'an of the Muslims or the Christian Bible. It is read and studied both privately and in temple worship: among the Digambara it occupies the same central place in the religious observances during Paryushan that the Kalpa Sutra does for the Svetembara. It is probably the most important work which is accepted by both major branches of Jainism. Although it falls outside the collection of most ancient texts accepted as the sacred canon by the Svetambara, yet it is regarded by them as a most authoritative exposition of Jain belief. As a short terse text it has needed further explanation and has been supplemented by a very large number of commentaries, the oldest of which has been ascribed in Svetambara circles (though improbably) to the author of the main text himself.
The Tattvartha Sutra is also known as the Tattvarthadhigama Sutra (though it has been argued (see Zydenbos 1983, p 11) that this name referred originally to the oldest commentary on the Sutra). A sutra is a religious text, generally a manual of short aphorisms. The title 'Tattvarthadhigama' is made up
of three Sanskrit words tattva, determining the nature of true nature, artha, thing, and things' as Pandit Sukhlalji puts it adhigama, knowledge. It may (1974, p5), or 'the holding of the then be translated 'a manual for truth as true' (das Fur-wahrthe knowledge of the true halten der Wahrheiten) in nature of things'.
Jacobi's words( 1906, p292) (1.2). The most ancient sacred This right faith originates either books of the sains, those which spontaneously by nature or are recognised as the canon, at through instruction (1.3). The least by the Svetambara, were seven fundamental truths are compiled in Ardha-Magadhi, a listed in verse 4: jiva, soul, and Prakrit or popular spoken ajiva, non-soul, asvara, inflow of language as distinct from the karma to the soul bandha, Sanskrit of the scholarly stream binding to the soul, samvara, among Jain thinkers (Succeeding cessation of inflow, nirjara, centuries were to see, of course, shedding of accumulated karma, a vast output of lain literature in and the goal of the preceding Sanskrit.)The Tattvartha Sutra is four, moksa or final liberation. short: it consists of 357 terse This list of seven tattva omits aphorisms of a few words each, two which are added in many the whole divided into ten other texts, punya and papa, chapters of uneven lengh, Taken merit and demerit or good and together these chapters present bad results in karma: these may an epitome of Jainism. The ideas be regarded as subsumed in are not new, they are to be asrava and bandha. found in the Agama canonical These first four verses, then, texts in scattered form, but here sum up the basic fundamentals they brought together for the of Jainism. The remaining thirtyfirst time in a structured system. one verses of Chapter I discuss So short and pithy is the text in the process of cognition, the some places that it has more the different types of knowledge characteristics of an aide- and their acquisition being memoire easily committed to analysed and classified in some memory than a full and detailed detail. In other words, the manual, to be filled out by the mechanism of right faith and commentators whether in knowledge is discussed (right writing or orally.
conduct being deferred to
Chapters VII and IX). After this FUNDAMENTALS OF JAINISM the subsequent chapters take AND THE NATURE OF up the seven fundamental COGNITION
truths in order these are in The first verse of the first effect the objects of right faith chapter expresses the three and knowledge. jewels', ratna traya, of Jainism:
samyag darsana inana SOUL. NON-SOUL AND THE charitrani moksa margah(1.) NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE 'right faith, knowledge and Three chapters, Il to IV. are conduct are the means to concerned with the soul, jiva, in moksa'. 'Right faith' is a rather all its manifestations. The main simplistic translation of samyag characteristic which defines a darsana, though it is commonly soul is upayoga (11.8). Jain encountered. Right faith, in this thinkers refer to three qualities context, means rather the of the soul, consciousness, bliss inclination towards validly and energy. Umasvati here takes
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