ABSTRACT
The original transmission of the Jain doctrine, which goes back to the word of the Jinas or Tīrthaṃkaras, especially Mahāvīra who preached in Magadha (Eastern India, modern Bihar) in the fifth century bce and was thus a contemporary of the Buddha, was primarily oral. Mahāvīra is said to have delivered his message live to a group of disciples who were in direct contact with him. The tradition (paramparā) was a chain of human beings who carried the teaching from one generation to the next. Mendicants, both monks and nuns (sādhus and sādhvīs), are the main carriers of the teaching, but it could not have survived without the material support of the lay community (men and women, or śrāvakas and śrāvikās) to which it is also imparted in various ways. On the other hand, Jainism, which still survives today in India, is probably one of the most important “manuscript cultures” of the subcontinent. In the course of time (see below), writing and reproduction by copying became vital to the survival of the teaching. The global word of the Jinas was distributed in a large variety of different works which came to be organized into various categories. Jain literature is therefore an exceptionally vast field. Historical beginnings of Jainism were difficult and were progressively marked by group separations. The main division between the Śvetāmbaras, whose mendicants wear white monastic robes, and the Digambaras, whose monks are nude, must have occurred in the first centuries of the Common Era. It was a fact in the fifth century ce, the time when the religious meeting of Valabhī (Gujarat) was held and the Śvetāmbara scriptures were put into writing.
