A History of Sanskrit Literature c20.s2.6

c20.s2.6

The Jain Caritras and Purāṇas which contain many legends do not normally attain the level of literature, but more importance attaches to the elaborate allegory of human life in the form of a tale written in 906 by the renowned author Siddha or Siddharṣi. A late and doubtless unreliable authority⁵ tells that he was induced to adopt Jainism because his young wife and his mother, annoyed at his late hours, one night insisted on shutting the door on him, so that he went to the always open door of some Jains and refused to give up his intention of becoming a Jain monk. The same authority puts him down as a cousin of the famous poet Māgha. In point of fact the *Upamitibhavaprapañcākathā*,⁶ which is in prose with considerable numbers of stanzas interposed from time to time, is by no means badly written, and the author has kindly supplied a key at the end of the introduction to the allegory, so that it is not difficult to follow. His Sanskrit, which he deliberately chose because it was a sign of culture, is not difficult—indeed, he promises that it will be as easy to follow as Prākrit, but the impression of the work as a whole is, as in the case of most allegories, one of unrelieved dreariness, no doubt partly due to the extreme difficulty in making anything picturesque out of the dry and scholastic Jain tenets and the somewhat narrow views of life prevalent in Jain circles.