But in other respects also the admission of the laity has produced
decisive changes in the life of the clergy. In the education of worldly
communities, the ascetic—whose rules of indifference toward all and every
thing, make him a being concentrated entirely upon himself and his
goal—is united again to humanity and its interests. The duty of educating
the layman and watching over his life, must of necessity change the
wandering penitents into settled monks—who dedicate themselves to the
care of souls, missionary activity, and the acquisition of knowledge, and
who only now and again fulfil the duty of changing their place of
residence. The needs of the lay communities required the continual
presence of teachers. Even should these desire to change from time to
time, it was yet necessary to provide a shelter for them. Thus the
Upâśraya or places of refuge, the Jaina monasteries came into
existence, which exactly correspond to the Buddhist Sanghârâma. With the
monasteries and the fixed residence in them appeared a fixed membership of
the order, which, on account of the Jaina principle of unconditional
obedience toward the teacher, proved to be much stricter than in Buddhism.
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 _Aṅga_,—the members of the body of the law, which
was perhaps originally produced in the third century B.C. Of the
_Aṅga_ eleven are no doubt preserved among the Śvetâmbaras from
a late edition of the fifth or sixth century A.D. These works are not
written in Sanskrit, but in a popular Prâkrit 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
_Aṅga_ 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 _Âchâráṅga_ and the _Kalpasûtra_
are translated by H. Jacobi in the _S.B.E_ Vol. XXII, and a part of
the _Upâsakadasâ Sûtra_ by R. Hoernle in the _Bibl. Ind._ In the
estimates of the age of the _Aṅga_ I follow H. Jacobi, who has
throughly discussed the question _S.B.E._ Vol. XXII, pp.
xxxix-xlvii.] The Digambaras, on the other hand, have preserved nothing of
the _Aṅga_ but the names. They put in their place later systematic
works, also in Prâkrit, and assert, in vindication of their different
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