The Dhavala and Its Standing

The Shatkhandagama is famous almost as much for its great commentary as for itself. In the tenth century the scholar-monk Virasena composed on it an enormous commentary called the Dhavala, one of the monumental works of Jain learning, which preserves and expounds the ancient text and its abstruse doctrine at vast length; the survival and study of the Shatkhandagama is bound up with this and the related commentarial tradition. For much of its history the text was guarded as a sacred treasure in the Digambara monastic and manuscript tradition, and its critical edition and publication in the twentieth century was a major event in the modern study of Jainism.

The scripture holds canonical authority for the Digambaras, for whom it stands in place of the lost teaching of Mahavira, while the Svetambara tradition, which preserves its own canon, does not accord it that status. Scholars regard the Shatkhandagama as an invaluable witness to the early development of Jain karma theory and to the doctrinal history of the tradition, and as the foundation on which much of Digambara scholastic philosophy was subsequently built.