Article: Śvetāmbara canon

Indrabhūti Gautama preaches
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All Jains believe that the Jinas provide the original teachings for the Jain faith, especially Mahāvīra, the 24th Jina. The Jinas reveal the same essential truths, according to the needs of the society into which they are born. They pass on these principles in speech, beginning the chain of oral transmission. After being passed on for generations by leaders known as elders and teachers, these oral teachings are eventually written down, creating the scriptures.

The roots of the differences between the Śvetāmbara and Digambara canons can be traced to the physical split in the Jain community around 300 BCE. Large parts of the teachings had been forgotten already, such as the Pūrvas and the 12th Aṅga, the Dṛṣṭi-vāda, which both sects agree was lost by the 4th century BCE. The group of Jains who can be thought of as ancestors of the Śvetāmbara sect recognised that the famine that drove some Jains south endangered preservation of the tradition. They began to organise official recitations – vācanās – or ‘councils’ to consolidate knowledge of the teachings. The final council was held in Valabhī, Gujarat, under the supervision of the religious teacher Devarddhigaṇi Kṣamāśramaṇa in the 5th century CE. It took place ‘980 or 993 years’ after Mahāvīra’s death according to tradition, which is 453 or 466 CE. All the texts that are considered to comprise the Śvetāmbara canon were written down there. However, accounts of the event, which are all much later, do not provide names of the texts that were collected.

The Jains who later developed into the Digambara sect did not accept any of these councils. They believe that the remnants of the original teachings were written down in the 2nd century CE. These form the basis of the Digambara canon.

Marginal texts among the Śvetāmbara scriptures occasionally describe the inevitable deterioration of the teachings in the future. This will happen in the sixth descending phase of the cycle of time, in the reign of King Kalkin, when all principles of faith, knowledge and right conduct will be destroyed. The situation will be restored with the ascending cycle of time.

Monastic teacher and pupils
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In its most restricted understanding, the phrase ‘Śvetāmbara Āgamas’ refers to the sūtras. This is both a style of writing – short aphorisms – and a more general phrase meaning any sacred text. In its broader meaning it can describe Mahāvīra’s teaching as shaped in successive councils. This wide interpretation is underlined by the extensive variety of styles and literary forms of the texts that make up the Āgamas.

The Āgamas are written in forms of Prakrit. Since Prakrit was widely understood, this was probably a deliberate decision to ensure that as many people as possible could understand the holy writings. Even so the language of the elite, Sanskrit, was also used, especially in commentaries. Later on, writing in vernacular languages rose in importance. However, the language chosen for a form usually reflected the context and audience of the work and thus varied in different situations.

A situation that was widespread was the commentarial one. The Āgamas have always been the subject of intense hermeneutic activity. Scholars have produced copious translations, paraphrases, explanations, glossaries, notes and full commentaries, providing fuel for differences in opinion and interpretation. Early commentaries tended to use Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit whereas later works were generally written in Sanskrit and regional languages.

Māhavīra decorated
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From the Śvetāmbara perspective, Mahāvīra’s original teaching was ‘open’ – an idea that the Prakrit word pavayaṇa applied to it in some early scriptures might convey. This term implied the use of Prakrit instead of Sanskrit, which was associated with the restricted elite of the brahmins.

Therefore the Āgamas are written in Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit and another form of Prakrit known as Jaina Māhārāṣṭrī. The former is associated with the region of eastern India when Mahāvīra  preached and the latter with western India. Somebody who understands one language can also understand the other because the differences are grammatical. The degree of blend depends on the texts. Earlier texts tend to have more Ardhamāgadhī.

From the 14th century onwards, regional languages tended to become an important medium of teaching and commenting. This did not mean that Prakrit and Sanskrit had become obsolete. Often corresponding to various levels of education, different languages were used depending on the context. Among Śvetāmbaras, this language was mainly Old Gujarati, used for the commentaries known as bālāvabodhas and ṭabos for instance. These range from extensive and in-depth explanations to word-to-word paraphrases, often equivalent to translations.

Pañca-pāṭha style of manuscript commentary
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The sūtras would have been ‘somnolent’ (Dundas 1996), had they not been kept alive by constant explanations, elaborations and discussions from the start. Commentaries take different forms and use various languages. Particular forms and languages tend to be associated with certain periods of scholarly activity.

The early phase of commentaries on the Śvetāmbara canon uses Jaina Māhārāṣṭrī Prakrit. These commentaries are:

• the verse niryuktis and bhāṣyas composed during the first centuries CE
• the prose cūrṇis written over the 6th to 7th centuries

These are technical kinds of commentaries that apply scholastic methods of analysis to understand words and concepts. Niryuktis, especially, are highly technical and often go further than their starting text. Not all texts have given birth to such commentaries. Not all such commentaries have identified authors.

Nevertheless, prominent authors include Bhadrabāhu and Jinabhadragaṇi. The former is sometimes called ‘Bhadrabāhu II’ (for example, Wiley 2004: 52), because he is likely to be a different person from the earlier writer credited with the Kalpa-sūtra. He is said to be the author of ten niryuktis. The latter monk is famous as the author of bhāṣyas.

Taking place from the 8th century onwards, the next phase of commentarial activity uses Sanskrit for ṭīkās, vṛttis and avacūrṇis. These terms cover a wide range of commentaries, which are often hard to distinguish, as they vary from simple paraphrases to elaborate discussions. Some Jain monks have specialised in commentary writing and stand out as figures of high calibre in the tradition. Perhaps the most eminent examples are:

• Haribhadra-sūri, active in the 8th century
• Abhayadeva-sūri, writing in the 11th century, who commented on nine Aṅgas
• Malayagiri, who wrote in the 12th century.

In the later phase, from the 14th century onwards, the language of the Śvetāmbara commentaries is mainly Old Gujarati. The bālāvabodhas and ṭabos range from extensive and in-depth explanations to word-to-word paraphrases, often equivalent to translations.

Monk and pupils
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Śvetāmbaras have displayed assorted attitudes towards their holy texts and the ways to use them. Scholar monks have used the scriptures to support or disprove intellectual and religious arguments down the centuries, which often have a sectarian dimension. Although knowledge of the teachings is a basic part of being a practising Jain, access to the teachings in written form has often been indirect for many Jains. This is again an issue of difference among the sects. Similarly, printing and editing the holy writings has been a controversial matter.

Since the medieval period, there is a great deal of evidence demonstrating how the scriptures are used in intellectual debates and controversies among learned mendicants (Granoff 1993, Dundas 2007, Balbir 2009 and others). An example of such an issue is that of image worship. The Mūrti-pūjak Śvetāmbaras practise it while the Sthānaka-vāsin and Terāpanthins reject it. The scholar monks often quote certain sections in particular works, sometimes giving the page number of the particular manuscript of the text they have used. Favoured since the 17th century, a question-and-answer format including scriptural quotations is a common method of presenting arguments and objections. These texts – praśnottaras or bols – are popular today as pedagogical tools.

Sectarian attitudes among both laity and mendicants vary regarding open access to all scriptures.

At the beginning of the 20th century, several monks complained that they could only access canonical writings through the mediation of commentaries in modern languages. They could not read the texts in the original language. This situation still applies today with variations depending on monastic orders and their attitudes towards religious education.

Nuns of the Śvetāmbara Tapā-gaccha sect are not allowed to read the Cheda-sūtras. These texts deal with monastic discipline in great detail. Lay people are generally not supposed to read them either.

Mendicants of the Śvetāmbara Mūrti-pūjak orders study the Āgamas in a steady staged manner (Cort 2001). A junior monk starts with the basic texts – the Mūla-sūtras – and in time moves on to read more technical texts as he becomes more senior. This progression is codified in books dealing with the monastic way of life.

Both mendicant and lay Jains usually believe that the laity should read the Āgamas in their narrowest interpretation together with or under mendicant supervision. But they can read alone stories, hymns or digests that are specially produced for lay people and can learn about the Āgamas from monastic sermons. Thus there are ‘practical canons’ (Cort 2001, Dundas 2002: 63) for various purposes and people, which may evolve in the course of time.

Image of Ānandasāgara-sūri
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Jains have often been resistant to the idea of printing the holy writings. One reason is because printing is a mechanical process and may therefore involve harm. Another one is the quasi-magical qualities attributed to scriptures.

After opposition from some monks and lay people, the first printed edition of the Śvetāmbara Āgamas was published in 1874.

Maintaining knowledge of the original Āgamas among Śvetāmbara Jain mendicants has been an issue in the 20th century and is still so today. The monk Ānandasāgara-sūri (1875–1950) was one of the driving forces in reviving this declining knowledge. He founded the Āgamodaya Samiti publishing house, which specialises in publishing the sūtras and their commentaries in their original languages.