The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (191 page)

 
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(Skt., ‘limb, part’).
1
The eight steps of
R
ja
-Yoga in Hinduism.
2
A Jain term to denote the twelve ‘limbs’ of revered and basic texts. Among Jains, ‘scripture’ is a fluid, even a contested, concept (see
DIGAMBARA
). The
vet
mbara have a ‘
canon
’, defined by 19th-cent, European scholars as the ‘45 text canon’, but while this defines the core texts, more texts are revered, and groups among the
vet
mbara do not identify identical texts. Nevertheless, the basic texts for both Digambara and
vet
mbara are the Twelve A
gas, but
vet
mbara believe (xii) below to be lost:

(i) 
c
ra-a
ga
(‘Behaviour’, rules for ascetics);
(ii) 
S
trak
ta-a
ga
(‘On Heretical Views’, attitudes to rituals, and to other views);
(iii) 
Sth
na-a
ga
(‘Possibilities’, options especially, in relation to
j
va
, and numerical descriptions;
(iv) 
Samav
ya-a
ga
(‘Combinations’, similarities, as in (iii), also describing the a
gas);
(v) Digambara,
Vy
khy
-prajñapti-a
ga