Scriptures in Jainism

The Jain canon has an unusual history: its oldest layer was transmitted orally for centuries, and the two main traditions disagree about how much of it survived.

Svetambara Jains accept a canon of Agamas - the Angas, Upangas, Chedasutras and others - redacted at the Council of Valabhi around the fifth century CE. Digambara Jains hold that the original canon was lost entirely, and treat later systematic works such as the Shatkhandagama as authoritative instead. Both traditions accept the Tattvartha Sutra of Umaswati, which is the closest thing Jainism has to a universally agreed statement of doctrine. Alongside these sit an enormous commentarial and narrative literature in Prakrit, Sanskrit, Apabhramsha and the regional languages - much of it preserved in temple manuscript libraries, and it is this corpus that JainGPT draws its answers from.

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