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Willem B. BOLLÉE, The Nijjuttis on the Seniors of the Svetämbara Siddhanta: Ayäranga, Dasaveyāliya, Uttarajjhāyā and Süyagada, Text and Selective Glossary. Beiträge zur Südasienforschung Südasien-Institut Universität Heidelberg 169. Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1995.
The cunni and the older tika commentaries on Avasyaka, Dasaveyäliya, Uttarajjhāyā, Ayāra, Süyagada, and "Dasa-Kappa-Vavahära" of the Svetambara Jaina canon include an exegesis of the so-called nijjuttis, collections of verses accompanying the main texts. In addition, the traditional list of nijjuttis includes a SürapannattiN and an IsibhāsiyaN, which, however, have not come down to us, if they ever existed. Instead we have two more nijjuttis, Pinda- and OhaN, which, however, stand somewhat apart from the other eight in that they are each dedicated to one specific topic. They are tracts in themselves. PindaN, however, was probably originally part of the AyäraN; the provenance of OhaN
is still unclear.
Bollée's present edition of the nijjuttis of Äyāra, Dasaveyäliya, Uttarajjhāyā and Sūyagada is a sequel to his 1994 edition of Pinda- and OhaN. For his edition Bollée culled the text mainly from existing printed editions of the cunni and tīkās. An additional source has been Niryukti-samgraha, a recent (1989) edition of all ten nijjuttis, which is unfortunately not available to me. As a result it is hard for me to judge what the added value of Bollée's edition consists of. Even so, it is clear that he entertains a narrow view of his task as editor, the edition apparently serving mainly as a corpus for the accompanying word index, which, in turn, is intended as a contribution to the Prakrit dictionary under preparation at Poona. However, while Bollée's earlier edition of Pinda- and OhaN still contains an index of all words in the texts, the index to the present edition consists merely of a selection of important or otherwise rare words. Moreover, the lemmata refer only to a selection of the attestations. As a result of this restriction, which is quite understandable from a lexicographical point of view, one of the other functions of the word index, namely that of an instrument in tracing the many parallel passages, is unfortunately reduced considerably.
The texts have been based mainly on the tīkās, as the cunnis quote only the beginnings (pratikās) of the verses. The cunni variants are duly noted, without, however, any discussion of their relationship to those of the ṭīkā. On the other hand, Bollée occasionally introduces a reading which has no support in any of the available sources at all. A case in point is saro ya for saro ya in AyaraN 6. In most of these cases the emendation is justified with reference to the metre, as in this case in which after säro the metre requires one long or two short syllables. By taking the metre as the basic instrument in the reconstruction of the text Bollée seems to refer back to Alsdorf, who, struck by the grammatical irregularities of the language, concluded that the grammar of the text must have
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been subservient to the metre ("Jaina Exegetical Literature and the History of the Jaina Canon”, in: A.N. Upadhye et al. (eds.), Mahāvīra and his Teachings, Bombay 1977, p.2). It is doubtful, however, if this conclusion may be reversed by emending the metre at the cost of the grammar. In any case, Bollée might have strengthened his case by providing other examples from the nijjutti corpus of yā for ya.
Furthermore, the identification of parallel passages is carried out only haphazardly. It would have been useful if Bollée had been more exact about the texts which were consulted for this purpose. We have to assume that they did not include Aņuogaddāra, as the editor refrained from mentioning that ĀyāraN 4 = Aņuogaddāra 8 (1).
Apart from the identification of Bhāsa intrusions matters of higher text criticism are not considered at all. Thus it is unfortunate that Bollée does not mention one of the few available articles dealing with questions of this type of text criticism, namely Bansidhar Bhatt, "Ācāra-Cūlās and -Niryukti. Studies I”, IT, XIV, 1987-88 (Felicitation Volume Colette Caillat), pp. 95-116. (But neither does he mention "A Composite niksepa in the Ācāra Niryukti" by the same author, which appeared in K. Bruhn and A. Wezler (eds), Studien zum Jainismus und Buddhismus. Gedenkschrift für Ludwig Alsdorf. ANIS 23. Wiesbaden 1981, pp. 1-9.) As a general remark it may be noted that the edition of the nijjuttis out of context is probably not suited for investigating points of higher text criticism anyhow, as such investigations almost automatically include the main text, cunni and ţikā as well.
Furthermore, it is to be regretted that Bollée has done little to facilitate the reading of the texts. The nijjuttis are notoriously difficult texts, being hard to read on their own without the help of the commentaries. In this the defective grammar is only a minor problem compared to that of the segmentation of the text. Leumann in his edition of the DasaveyāliyaN (ZDMG XLVI 1892, pp. 581-663) solved this problem quite economi- : cally by inserting various combinations of letters and numbers into the text. It is to be hoped that in the editions of the remaining nijjuttis some such device will be considered.
Finally, one wonders why Bollée, who has by now edited altogether six nijjuttis, refuses to contribute to the discussion of their nature and function, or to point out possibilities for future research. I should like to take this opportunity to briefly discuss some points based primarily on the four nijjuttis edited in the book under review.
The framework of a nijjutti consists of a table of the contents of the main text, enumerating the titles of the "books", "chapters" and "subchapters”, and providing lists of keywords which furnish brief indications of the contents of the respective sections. Some of the latter type of lists resemble the uddānas or mātikās in the Buddhist Pāli canon. It should be noted that the keywords in, for instance, AyāraN 172 are purely descriptive, that is, they are not quotations from the text. This means that they did not serve as clues for the memorization of the main text, which, we may assume, was at the time already transmitted in written form; instead, they are, as has already been argued elsewhere by others, indeed an aid for the exegesis of the text. By contrast, the titles are often, but not necessarily (the title Khuddiyāyāra of Dasaveyāliya 3 is, for instance, purely descriptive), based on words actually found in the text. For instance, the alternative title of Āyāra 1.5,1, Āvamti, is the very word with which the uddesa in question
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opens (see AyāraN 238: āyāna-paen 'āvanti gonna-nāmena loga-sāru tti). The ways in which the tables of contents in the individual nijjuttis are framed still awaits a thorough investigation in its own right. For an example of the study of a comparable phenomenon, namely the table of contents in Kautalya's Arthaśāstra, I may refer to H. SCHARFE, Investigations in Kautalya's Manual of Political Science. Wiesbaden 1993, p. 16ff. Such a study is of considerable importance as this part of the nijjutti forms the only direct link with the main text, virtually all other matter of the nijjutti taking its cue, or starting, from the table of contents rather than the main text.
This is for instance the case with the investigation of words under various aspects (Nikṣepa) or of their synonyms (egattha), which is mainly restricted to the words of the titles, and is only very rarely extended to include other words as well (a case in point is kāma in DasaveyāliyaN 161, which is found in Dasaveyāliya 2, 1). Likewise, the stories alluded to in the nijjutti serve as illustrations of the various aspects or synonymns of the words of the titles. The importance attached to stories in the exegesis of the doctrine and religious practice becomes clear from DasaveyāliyaN 49-150 which presents an elaborate classification of the different types of stories and their respective functions. . Starting from the table of contents and the allusions to stories (I leave out the Niksepa/lists of synonyms), it may become clear why some texts have nijjuttis and others do not. For instance, in the case of Thāņa, the contents of which is arranged numerically, a table of contents would be completely superfluous. The allusions to stories explain why there are no nijjuttis for the narrative texts of the canon, as these already comply with the ideas about the ideal mode of exposition implied in the nijjuttis.
While some terms used in the nijjuttis, such as āharana, heu, and kārana, may indeed be reminiscent of “la méthodologie du Nyāya", showing that "une niryukti n'est pas différente dans ses méthodes d'autres modèles d'explication connus en Inde" (N. Balbir, Avaśyaka-Studien. Introduction générale et Traduction. ANIS 45, 1. Wiesbaden 1993, p.40), I do not believe that the source and inspiration for the nijjutti have to be sought in particular in Nyāya. For instance, both table of contents and illustrative stories are also included among the so-called yuktis or "methods of exposition". This connection would in fact also suggest a solution of the vexing problem of the meaning of the term nijjutti itself, which might conformingly be paraphrased as something like "exposition or exegesis by using yuktis".
The points raised here obviously require a more detailed study than is feasible in the context of a review. This also applies in particular to the study of the language and metre of the text. It is precisely for the investigation of the latter two aspects that Bollée's editions are eminently suited.
Herman Tieken (Leiden)
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________________ 684 BUCHBESPRECHUNGEN U.R. Anantha MURTHY. Samskara, oder Was tun mit der Leiche des Ketzers, die uns im Weg liegt und das Leben blockiert. Roman. Ubersetzt von Gernot Schneider. Frauenfeld: Verlag Im Waldgut, 1994 (Neue Indische Bibliothek, Band 15). 174 S. Das Kanaresische (auch Kannada genannt, wie der Name in der Sprache selbst lautet) ist, eine der historisch und kulturell wichtigsten Sprachen der drawidischen Familie, undi Indiens uberhaupt; sie hat eine glanzvolle Geschichte, die mehr als tausend Jahre zuruckreicht, und wird heute von mehr als 40 Millionen von Menschen gesprochen; dennoch ist die kanaresische Literatur im Abendland nahezu unbekannt. In Indien haben Schriftsteller aus der modernen Kannada-Literatur mehrmals auf nationaler Ebene wichtige Unterscheidungen erhalten, aber gute Ubersetzungen in europaischen Sprachen, wodurch diese Literatur auch im Ausland bekannter werden konnte, sind leider noch sehr selten. In dieser bedauernswerten Lage gibt es nur einen einzigen kanaresischen Roman, der gut ubersetzt worden ist, und zwar Samskara von U.R. Anantha Murthy (geb. 1932). Das Original, 1965 in England geschrieben, erschien 1966 in Maisur (Mysore), und schon 1976 erschien die englischsprachige Ubersetzung von A.K. Ramanujan (Samskara. A Rite for a Dead Man. Delhi: Oxford University Press), die sofort den Roman und den Autor auch ausserhalb des kanaresischsprachigen indischen Bundeslandes Karnataka zu Ruhm verhalf. In Karnataka hatte der Roman inzwischen einen zweideutigen Ruf bekommen. Der Roman ist die schlichte aber fesselnde Geschichte eines hochgelehrten Mitglieds einer der orthodoxesten hinduistischen Priesterkasten Karnatakas, der durch einen problematischen Vorfall in seinem Dorf (der aber in Wesen trivial ist, wie Kritiker des Buches bemerkt haben) und durch was darauf folgt, in eine personliche Krise belandet. Er fangt an, uber fast alles zu zweifeln: uber seinen religiosen Glauben; uber die traditionelle Ethik, nach der er sein ganzes Leben gefuhrt hat; uber die Vorzuglichkeit seiner Kaste und seine personliche Stelle in der Gesellschaft; uber was sein Ziel im Leben sein soll. Die freie, offene Besprechung von traditionellen religiosen Dogmen, von sozialen Verhaltnissen, und vor allem von Moral im Geschlechtsleben machten den Roman schnell zu einer literarischen Sensation. Das Zeigen der artistisch bemerkenswerten Verfilmung des Buches (1970) in Kinos wurde verboten, weil sie angeblich verletzend war fur die Gefuhle der Kaste, zu der die Hauptfigur des Romans (wie auch der Autor) gehort. In literarischen Kreisen wurde das Buch entweder bejubelt, oder beschimpft als entartet wegen zu grosser abendlandischer Einflusse. Tatsachlich sehen manche Seiten aus wie eine einfaltige Einfuhrung in den franzosischen Existentialismus, eine Weltanschauung, die zu jener Zeit in bestimmten indischen intellektuellen Kreisen Aufmerksamkeit fand, aber wofur die grosse Mehrheit der indischen Leser gar kein Verstandnis hat. Es wurde sogar vorgeworfen, der Roman sei ein Abklatsch von La peste von Camus; aber hiermit tut man dem Autor jedoch Unrecht an.