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RELIGIOUS SECTS
the twelfth century, and the compiler of the Jain Puranas of the Dekhan is said to have written at the end of the ninth. The Kalpa Sútra professes to have been composed nine hundred and eighty years after the death of Mauávira, or fifteen centuries ago; but from internal evidence* it could not have been composed earlier than the twelfth or thirteenth century. Various eminent Juin autliors were cotemporary also with MUNJA and BHOJA, princes of Dhár, in the ninth and tenth century **, and a number of works seem to have been compiled in the sixteenth century during the tolerant reign of AKBAR.
Of the progress of the Jain faith in the Gangetic provinces of Upper India we have no very satisfactory traces. It may be doubted if they ever extended themselves in Bengal. Behár, according to their own traditions, was the birth - place of VARDDHAMANA, and Benares of PÁRśVANÁTH; and temples and monuments of their teachers are common in both, particularly the foriner; but all those now existing are of very recent dates', and there are no vestiges referable to an inter
* [Weber, Ueber das Satrunjaya Mahátmyam, p. 7 - 12, fixes the year 632 p. Chr. as the date of its composition.]
** [in the tenth and eleventh, according to Lassen, Ind. Alt., III, 813 – 54.]
As late even as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [See, however, Journal of the Bombay Br. R. A.S., III, p. 88 ff.]These dates are sometimes said to indicate the periods at which the temples were repaired, but the intelligent author of the Visit to Mount Párávanátho observes, only in one instance is
