The One Text Both Rival Sects Accept as Authoritative

The Tattvartha Sutra read during Das Lakshana Parva holds an unusual position in Jain textual history: composed by the philosopher Umasvati at some point in the early centuries of the common era, it is one of the very few Jain texts accepted as authoritative scripture by both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions despite the deep and long-standing doctrinal disagreements between them, including on the question, covered elsewhere in this atlas, of whether women can attain full liberation, a split that runs through most other areas of Jain textual authority and produces two largely separate canons.

Digambara and Svetambara editions of the Tattvartha Sutra do differ from each other in some details and commentary, and scholars continue to debate exactly how the text came to hold this unusual shared status when so much else in Jain literature developed along strictly sectarian lines, but its use during Das Lakshana Parva specifically, read and studied by Digambara Jains during the very days when the tradition's own distinctiveness from the Svetambara Paryushana is most on display, is itself a small but telling reminder that the two branches of Jainism share far more foundational material than their differing calendars and rival festivals might suggest to an outside observer.