I have started reading the Acaranga Sutra of the Jains.
The english is at WisdomLib
The prakrit is at GRETIL
In literally the first paragraph we have:
no nāyaṃ bhavai: `atthi me āyā uvavāie, n’ atthi me āyā uvavāie?
Ayaranga1
‘Atthi me attā’ti vā assa saccato thetato diṭṭhi uppajjati;
The view: ‘My self survives.’
‘natthi me attā’ti vā assa saccato thetato diṭṭhi uppajjati;
The view: ‘My self does not survive.’
MN2
and
ke ahaṃ āsī ke vā io cuo iha peccā bhavissāmi? se jjaṃ puṇa
Ayaranga1
‘ahosiṁ nu kho ahaṁ atītamaddhānaṁ? Na nu kho ahosiṁ atītamaddhānaṁ? Kiṁ nu kho ahosiṁ atītamaddhānaṁ? Kathaṁ nu kho ahosiṁ atītamaddhānaṁ? Kiṁ hutvā kiṁ ahosiṁ nu kho ahaṁ atītamaddhānaṁ?
‘Did I exist in the past? Did I not exist in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? After being what, what did I become in the past?
MN2
I guess what I want to say is that this is an obvious and significant connection between the Jain literature and the Buddhist. I have seen other connections in passing here on Discuss, but I have not seen any credible and straightforward synoptic overview of these passages for the buddhist, jain and early upanishadic literatures.
Is there a thread, or an online site, or even, groan, an expensive, almost certainly out of print, academic book I can pay through the nose for that actually systematically compares the stock phrases of, for a start, the 4 prose nikayas, the Ayaranga, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chandogya?
This appears to me now to be a more or less minimal requirement to claim that one has “familiarity” with the milieu of indian philosophical literature at the time of the buddha.
Why is this knowlege so obscure? so scattered through other conversations?
Who is the Lamotte of early indian parallels?
(p.s Jacobi thinks that there are plenty of verses embedded in the Jain prose, is there a parser that could at least identify syllable counts and strip out possibilities for an analysis of this? I am trying to orient myself to the EBT poetry and it is frankly absurd how hard it is to even find romanised prakrit files for a given non-buddhist text)