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Contribution of Jains to Rama Literature
Jainism, as a religious and cultural system, is purely indigenous to India and, in its origin, dates back not only to proto-historic but to pre-historic times. It has had diffused over the entire length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent, drawing its adherents from all the races, peoples, classes, social and linguistic groups, inhabiting this land. As such, it has come to possess a very rich, vast and varied cultural heritage, including an enviable mass of literature, written in various forms and styles, in almost all the ancient and mediaeval languages, and on almost every branh of learning or subject of cultural, religious, social, political, national, traditional or human interest, so much so that no modern researcher, Indian or foreigner, dealing with any topic connected with Indology, can do without referring to a good bibliography of Jainological studies,
Dr. Jyoti Prasad Jain
Take for example the Rama-literature. Rama, the eldest son and successor of king Dasharatha of Ayodhya, born in the lineage of Ikshvaku of the celebrated. Solar race of ancient Indian kshatriyas, is one of the foremost personages of Indian proto-history. He was noted for his superb qualities of head and heart, his noble ideals, exemplary character and remarkable acheivements. Valmiki's Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, usually assigned by modern scholars to 2nd or 1st century B. C., has immortalised its hero Rama and his life-story. This work has come to constitute the ultimate source and principal basis of and set the trend for all later writers of the Rama lore, particularly those of the Brahmanical tradition, yet, whereas till the 12th century A.D., only about a dozen works, mostly in Sanskrit, were composed on this subject, in subsequent centuries, especially with the emergence and growing popularity of the Rama-cult as a branch of the Vaishnava sect propagated by Ramanujacharya, Rama came to be accepted as an important incarnation of the god Vishnu. Consequently, since then Rama literature saw a rapid rise and more than a thousand works were produced in Sanskrit and the different regional languages, viz. Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Telgu, Malayalam, etc. We have even khotanese, Tibetan, Nepalesc, Ceylonese, Javanese, Malaysian, Indonesian.
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