On the development of the order and the leisure of monastic life, there
followed further, the commencement of a literary and scientific activity.
The oldest attempt, in this respect, limited itself to bringing their
doctrine into fixed forms. Their results were, besides other lost works,
the so-called _A[.n]ga_,--the members of the body of the law, which
was perhaps originally produced in the third century B.C. Of the
_A[.n]ga_ eleven are no doubt preserved among the ['S]vetambaras from
a late edition of the fifth or sixth century A.D. These works are not
written in Sanskrit, but in a popular Prakrit dialect: for the Jina, like
Buddha, used the language of the people when teaching. They contain partly
legends about the prophet and his activity as a teacher, partly fragments
of a doctrine or attempts at systematic representations of the same.
Though the dialect is different they present, in the form of the tales and
in the manner of expression, a wonderful resemblance to the sacred
writings of the Buddhists. [Footnote: A complete review of the
_A[.n]ga_ and the canonical works which were joined to it later, is
to be found in A. Weber's fundamental treatise on the sacred writings of
the Jainas in the _Indische Studien_, Bd. XVI, SS. 211-479 and Bd.
XVIII, SS. 1-90. The _Achara[.n]ga_ and the _Kalpasutra_
are translated by H. Jacobi in the _S.
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