The Tattvartha Sutra, "the aphorisms on the meaning of reality," also called the Tattvarthadhigama Sutra, is among the most authoritative philosophical texts of Jainism, and holds a unique place as the one major scripture accepted as authoritative by both the great Jain communities, the Svetambara and the Digambara. It was composed by the monk Umasvati (called Umasvami in the Digambara tradition), probably between the second and fifth centuries CE, and it is the first systematic exposition of the whole of Jain doctrine written in Sanskrit, the language of pan-Indian philosophy, rather than in the Prakrit of the older canonical texts, a choice that helped make Jain thought intelligible in the wider Indian intellectual world.
The work is a sutra: a chain of terse, aphoristic statements, some 350 in about ten chapters, designed to be memorised and unpacked by commentary. Its very first aphorism states the framework of the entire tradition: "right faith, right knowledge and right conduct together constitute the path to liberation", the "three jewels" (ratnatraya) of Jainism.