The Svetambara Agamas, composed in Ardhamagadhi and traditionally organized into groups including the Angas, Upangas and various auxiliary texts, were transmitted orally for centuries before being formally redacted in writing at councils held in Gujarat around the fifth century CE, a compilation process the rival Digambara Jain tradition does not fully accept as authoritative, since Digambara Jainism holds that the original Jain scriptures were lost entirely over time and instead relies on later Prakrit and Sanskrit texts of its own, including works composed in Jain Shauraseni Prakrit. Ardhamagadhi recitation remains part of Svetambara Jain monastic and lay religious practice today, particularly during the annual Paryushana festival, a period of intensive fasting, confession and scriptural study during which the Kalpa Sutra, an Ardhamagadhi text recounting the lives of the Tirthankaras, is traditionally read aloud in temples and monastic gatherings.
Modern Jain scholarship has produced extensive translations of the Ardhamagadhi Agamas into Hindi, Gujarati and English, though the original language retains its formal liturgical priority within Svetambara religious practice itself. Jain manuscript libraries called bhandars, particularly those at Patan and Jaisalmer in Gujarat and Rajasthan, preserved thousands of Ardhamagadhi and later Sanskrit Jain manuscripts across centuries, forming one of premodern India's most extensive systematically maintained textual archives.