The Council That Wrote the Agamas Down

Svetambara Jain tradition holds that the scriptures preached by Mahavira were transmitted orally for centuries and were badly damaged by famine and by the deaths of the monks who carried them. Two recovery councils were held, one at Mathura under Arya Skandila and one at Valabhi under Nagarjunasuri, at about the same time and without contact between them, and they produced recensions that did not agree.

A later assembly at Valabhi, presided over by Devarddhigani Kshamashramana and traditionally dated 980 or 993 years after the liberation of Mahavira, reconciled the two and committed the result to writing. That event is why the Svetambara canon exists as a written body of texts at all, and the dating formula, counted from Mahavira rather than from any imperial era, is itself evidence of how the community reckoned time.

The Digambaras reject the whole account. They hold that the original teaching was lost entirely within a few centuries and that no surviving text is scripture in the strict sense, which is one of the deepest differences between the two communities and not merely a disagreement about clothing. The atlas records the Svetambara account as the tradition's own and sets the Digambara position beside it without deciding between them.