The Shatkhandagama and Digambara Jain Scripture

The Shatkhandagama, meaning scripture in six parts, composed in Jain Shauraseni Prakrit by the teachers Pushpadanta and Bhutabali in approximately the second century CE, stands as the oldest surviving Digambara Jain canonical text and one of that tradition's most authoritative scriptural sources, addressing karma theory and the soul's path toward liberation in extensive systematic detail across its several component sections.

Digambara Jainism holds that the original teachings of Mahavira, transmitted orally in Ardhamagadhi, were eventually lost as successive generations of monks who had memorized them died without adequately passing the material on, making later Shauraseni Prakrit compositions such as the Shatkhandagama the tradition's practical scriptural foundation rather than a secondary supplement to an intact earlier canon, a significant doctrinal distinction from the Svetambara tradition's continued reliance on its own Ardhamagadhi Agamas. Sauraseni Prakrit recitation and study today occurs chiefly within Digambara monastic and scholarly circles, alongside extensive modern translation into Hindi and English for wider devotional and academic access. Modern scholarly editions and translations of the Shatkhandagama, produced across the twentieth century by Digambara Jain pandits and later academic Indologists, remain the primary means by which the text reaches readers outside the tradition's own Prakrit-trained monastic scholars today.