The Svetambara canon is usually counted at forty-five texts, though the number varies by sub-sect. At its core are the eleven Angas, the limbs, held to preserve the teaching of Mahavira as compiled by his disciples. The Acharanga sets out the conduct of the ascetic and includes an early account of Mahavira's own austerities; the Sutrakritanga argues against rival doctrines; the Bhagavati is a long dialogue covering cosmology, karma and metaphysics; others give narrative and disciplinary material. Around them sit twelve Upangas or subsidiary limbs, six Cheda-sutras on monastic rule and its breaches, four Mula-sutras including the Uttaradhyayana and the Dashavaikalika that novices learn, ten Prakirnakas, miscellaneous, and two short texts on epistemology.
The list is eleven Angas, not twelve, and the missing one matters. The twelfth, the Drishtivada, is held to have contained the fourteen Purvas, the prior teachings, a body of doctrine transmitted from before Mahavira and understood to have covered the deepest material on karma and cosmology. All Jain traditions agree it is lost, and both traditions' accounts of scripture are shaped by that loss.
The language is Ardhamagadhi, a Prakrit, a vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan speech rather than Sanskrit, which Jain tradition holds to be the language of Mahavira's preaching. The choice is doctrinal as well as historical: teaching in the vernacular rather than in the Sanskrit of the brahmins was itself a position. Later Jain literature, including the philosophical works both traditions accept, moved into Sanskrit, and the Agamas acquired layers of Prakrit and Sanskrit commentary, niryuktis, bhashyas, churnis and tikas, without which the archaic text is hard going even for specialists.