scriptures. Dhyana, states Sagarmal Jain, has been essential to Jaina religious practices, but the origins of Dhyana and Yoga in the pre-canonical era (before 6th-century BCE) is unclear, and it likely developed in the Sramanic culture of ancient India, Several śramaṇa movements are known to have existed in India before the 6th century BCE (pre-Buddha, pre-Mahavira), and these influenced both the āstika and nāstika traditions of Indian philosophy. The earliest Jaina texts, on Dhyana such as Sutrakranga, Antakrta-Dasanga and Rsibhashita, mention Uddaka Rāmaputta who is said to be the teacher of some meditation methods to Buddha, as well as the originator of Vipassana and Preksha meditation techniques. The Jaina tradition believes Rishabhanatha, the first Tirthankara, to have founded meditation, but there is no historical confirming evidence. The earliest mention of Dhyana in the canonical Jaina texts simply mention Dhyana as a means of emancipation, but in them ascetic practices are not emphasized nor is the discussion as systematic as in later Jaina texts or Hindu texts such as the Patanjali's Yogasutras. There is no archeological or literary evidence, states Sagarmal Jain, about the origins of systems for Dhyana and Yoga, and there is a great deal of similarity between Jaina, Buddhist, Ajivika, Samkhya, Yoga and other ancient Indian traditions. The earliest texts, such as Tattvarthasutra suggest that these ideas developed in parallel, sometimes with different terms for similar ideas in various Indian traditions, influencing each other. Buddhism introduced its own ideas, states Bronkhorst, such as the four dhyanas, which did not affect the mainstream meditation traditions in Jaina and Hindu traditions for a long time. All traditions, Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, introduced unique aspects and context to Dhyana, and mutually influenced each other. According to Bronkhorst, while Jaina and Hindu meditation traditions predate Buddhism, the Buddhist terminology such as Samadhi, may have influenced the wording found in one of the several types of Dhyana found in the Mahabharata as well as parts of Patanjali's Yogasutras. Alexander Wynne interprets Bronkhorst as stating that dhyana was a Jaina tradition, from which both Hinduism and Buddhism borrowed ideas on meditation. Wynne adds that Bronkhorst opinion "understates the role of meditation" in early Brahmanical tradition. Dhyana was incorporated into Buddhism from Brahmanical practices, suggests Wynne, in the Nikayas ascribed to Alara Kalama and Uddaka Rāmaputta. In early Brahamical yoga, the goal of meditation was considered to be a nondual state identical to unmanifest state