Why do Jains stories incorporate Hindu gods?
The following perspective is offered by Professor Padmanabh Jaini: The great devotional movement (bhakti) which swept India around the fifth or sixth century has already been mentioned, in connection with the collapse of Buddhism. While numerous mythological figures became the object of such cult worship, two stood far above all others in terms of their power to capture the popular imagination and to generate large followings. They were of course Rama and Krsna, the great heroes whose exploits were described in the widely told stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, respectively, and who were raised to the status of Visnu-avatara by the epics and by the Puranas of the early medieval period. Had Jaina teachers ignored the tremendous fascination which these figures held for the average layperson, regardless of his religious affiliation, they would have done so at the peril of their own societys disintegration. Thus we see in Jaina literature of the period the development of a parall
