Somnolent Stras Sriptural Cmmentary In Svetambara Jainism

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/269690/1

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PAUL DUNDAS SOMNOLENT SUTRAS: SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM The human body has furnished the Jains, as it has the followers of many other traditions, with a powerful metaphor by means of which the structure, status and function of various doctrinal and institutional aspects of their religion can be conveyed and understood. Most famously, the universe is depicted in Jain cosmology as a huge man' and, in similar vein, the Jain community also has been said to be like a body, with the monks constituting its head and the nuns and lay people its limbs.2 The Jain scriptural corpus too was sometimes envisaged as a man and the twelve main parts (anga) of the human body equated with the twelve principle texts (anga) of the canon.3 The sixteenth century devotional poet Anandghan, who used Gujarati as his medium, employed this last version of the metaphor in a hymn to the twenty first tirthankara Nami in which he refers to the "doctrineman" (samaypurus), but giving the image a further interesting twist. For Anandghan, the limbs of the doctrine-man are six: the basic scriptural text (sutra), the four classical modes of commentary upon it, called niryukti and bhasya (written in Prakrit verse), curni (written in Prakrit prose, with elements of Sanskritisation) and vrtti (written in Sanskrit prose) respectively, and, lastly, experience of doctrine and practice based on participation in an authoritative teacher lineage (parampar anubhav). Whoever cuts off one of those limbs, Anandghan asserts, will receive a bad rebirth. As can be seen, the sutra text is here not privileged by being depicted as the head or most important part of the doctrine-man and is instead understood by Anandghan as merely an equal participant in a broader and interrelated nexus involving root scripture, commentary and interpretation. My purpose in this paper is not to pursue the ramifications of the use of body imagery in Jainism but, instead, to address the issue of how certain prominent Jain intellectuals in the medieval period viewed the nature of scriptural commentary. It should hardly be surprising, given the lengthy time-span over which Jainism developed, that there have often been differences within the religion about the relative status of scripture and its traditional explication. The non-image worshipping Svetambaras provide good examples of this. Lonka (fifteenth century), Journal of Indian Philosophy 24: 73-101, 1996. (c) 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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74 PAUL DUNDAS who attempted to reactivate the ancient mode of ascetic life described in the scriptures and from whom the aniconic Sthanakvasi sect still found today ultimately originates, seems to have rejected the authority of what was by his time a voluminous exegetical literature on the sutras on the grounds that it compromised the purety of the original doctrine preached by Mahavira and the other tirthankaras. In the last century, however, Jayacarya (1803-1881), one of the most important chief teachers of the other main aniconic Svetambara sect, the Terapanthis, which, in advocating a rigorous style of Jainism firmly based on the scriptures only, to a large extent perpetuates the literalist approach of Lonka, produced a remarkable rendering into Rajasthani couplets (jor) of the fifth anga of the canon, the Bhagavati Sutra, into which he actually incorporated portions, also translated into Rajasthani, of the standard Sanskrit vrtti commentary by Abhayadeva Suri (eleventh century). In the one case, then, scriptural commentary is abandoned as promoting laxity; in the other, it effectively becomes scripture itself. The following account of medieval Jain attitudes towards scripture and the commentary which purports to explicate it will be focused upon Abhayadeva Suri, Jainism's greatest scriptural exegete, and a later figure, Dharmasagara (sixteenth century), its greatest sectarian polemicist. A clear linkage beween the two can be seen in their mutual reiteration of a claim, to be described below, by an earlier Jain scholar, which was based on etymological sleight of hand (and also furnishes the title of this paper), that a sutra without some sort of accompanying commentarial explication is equivalent to somebody who is asleep. Firstly, however, it will be necessary to offer some broader contextualisations. . COMMENTARY In a paper delivered in 1984 but only published in 1993, Kendall Folkert, at the time the only scholar carrying out research into both the Jain community in India and its scriptural tradition, pertinently asked what, in the broadest context, "full awareness of the role and place of commentary would do for our sense of the being of a text."7 The specific example Folkert adduced was the Confucian Analects which had been treated by earlier western scholars as a self-contained sacred book roughly equivalent to the Protestant Bible but which is in actuality a body of material functioning within and drawing its significance from an elaborate and centuries old network of exegesis. In a recent full scale study, Henderson has used the Confucian Analects

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 75 and the massive accumulation of explanatory writings upon them to demonstrate the centrality of commentary in the post-classical, premodern world as a mode of discourse which played an important part in moulding patterns of thought and he has also made clear that, in the religious environment, whatever the differences which may separate the root scriptures of various traditions, exegetes have throughout history participated in common styles of explication which operate across religious and temporal frontiers.8 In the specifically Christian context, Jonathan Z. Smith has argued that, beginning from the Reformation and under the influence of the techniques of Humanist scholarship, commentary on the New Testament came into its own as effectively a Protestant topos in which "the category of inspiration is transposed from the text to the experience of the interpreter",9 and interpretative writings of this sort, from Erasmus to Bultmann, have had and continue to have immense prestige not just as works of scholarship but as intense personal engagements with the scriptures they explicate. Traditional exegesis on South Asian scriptures, however, has much less seldom met with such approval, until comparatively recently either being castigated as misguided, unreliable and pedantic, obfuscating the unmediated understanding of the root text which the philologist is trying to achieve or, alternatively, barely being acknowledged as commentary at all, as often in the case of Sankara's Brahmasutrabhasya. 10 Gratifyingly, however, indigenous Indian exegesis has begun to attract increasing interest, a matter of no small importance for the study of South Asian religions, for even if the formation of a scholarly or theological discourse on the basis of accumulating layers of commentary upon a foundational text should not be regarded as an exclusively Indian phenomenon, it can nonetheless be accepted as a virtual truism that intellectual progress in traditional South Asia was largely conducted through the interplay of root text, commentary and sub-commentary. Recent stimulating studies have been able to demonstrate how a shift in focus from root text can elucidate the manner in which the concerns of Indian religious or sastric traditions have often be determined or confirmed by commentators. For example, Burford has highlighted the manner in which Theravada Buddhist exegetes attempted to smooth out ambivalences within one of the oldest Pali scriptures, the Suttanipata, and make it conform to later standardised notions, 12 while Clooney has argued that the central authority for normative brahman ritualism, the Mimamsasutra of Jaimini (c.200 C.E.), was decisively rerouted by the third century commentator Sabara.13 Insightful work has also been

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76 PAUL DUNDAS carried out into the traditional exegesis of important venacular texts such as the Tirukkural and the Ramcaritmanas, with specific reference to the part which commentary has played in generating their quasi-scriptural status, 14 and attention has been suggestively drawn by Coburn to the fact that explanation need not always be exclusively literary but can also have visual and other dimensions. 15 It is, of course, the duty of philologists to point to manifest discrepancies between source and exegesis. By and large, however, scholarly approaches to traditional Indian commentary have turned around its success or failure in mirroring the supposed actual intentions of the author of the root text from which it derives 16 or have addressed the various specific hermeneutic strategies used by commentators.17 Furthermore, as can be seen in the contributions of Burford and Clooney just mentioned, while the intellectual respectability of commentary is no longer seriously questioned, the study of it seems very much linked to the attempt to retrieve the "original" version of a doctrine without dependence on a particular tradition's own understanding of it. 18 Little consideration has been given to the alternative questions of the status of commentary within South Asian traditions as an institution, the extent to which it can be regarded as representing a text as well as explaining it and to the fact that commentary has on occasion itself achieved canonicity. 19 JAIN COMMENTARY The standard Jain position with regard to scripture, which finds verbal expression for the first time around the second century CE, is that the tirthankaras are associated with the meaning only of the sutras, whereas their disciples (ganadhara) are responsible for its verbal formulation 20 On this basis, it has been said that the whole Jain scriptural corpus is itself a huge commentary on the central truth, enunciated by each tirthankara throughout beginningless time, that reality is characterised by appearance, stability and disappearance.21 The late canonical text, the Mahanisitha Sutra, goes so far as to state that the tirthankaras provided a fully developed body of commentarial material with the most important Jain mantra, the Pancanamaskara, which subsequently disappeared owing to the degenerative effects of time.22 Although Jain teachers do sometimes assert that commentary was provided with all the root sutras from the very beginning,23 a view which has a counterpart in Theravada Buddhism where the claim is found that a substantial corpus of oral explication was uttered by the Buddha

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 77 himself to supplement his preaching and subsequently formed the basis of the now lost Sinhalese commentaries upon which the fifth century CE exegete Buddhaghosa drew, there is no evidence to support the historicity of this.24 Nonetheless, early acceptance of the necessity of some sort of reflection upon or explanation of the teachings can be seen in the assertion of what is perhaps the oldest Jain scripture, the Acaranga Sutra, that "the great man, whose mind is not on external things, should know the doctrine by the doctrine, either through his own intelligence or through the explanation of another or through hearing it in the vicinity of others."25 The term "sruta", "what has been heard", which eventually developed in Jain philosophy to have the sense of any spoken or written symbol, seems in its earliest usage to have roughly corresponded in meaning to "scripture", in the same manner as sruti in Hinduism denotes the totality of revealed truth as embodied in the Veda.26 Srutajnana, in Jain epistemology denoting in slightly blurred fashion both "knowledge of scripture" and "knowledge located within scripture", 27 is dependent upon those who reveal it and at the same time reveals the truth itself. It is conditioned by a wide and fluctuating range of karmic influences (technically called ksayopasamika) and thus requires correct and controlled modes of interpretation.28 Haribhadra (eighth century) makes clear the broad issue involved: Even though sruta is transmitted to those (who are capable of adopting and maintaining correct practice), human beings cannot gain the desired result (artha) from that (statement) whose meaning (artha) is not (fully and correctly) understood. Because of that, anuyoga of the words of the enlightened teachers is undertaken.29 Anuyoga means "conjoining" each significant word in a scriptural text with its broadest connotative context and thus bringing it into full association with the complexity of reality.30 The standard techniques for employing this particular hermeneutical methodology are enshrined in the Anuyogadvarani, "The Doors to Anuyoga" (c. third/fourth century CE), itself a canonical work, which demonstrates their applicability to the central text of Jain ritual practice, the Avasyaka Sutra.31 However, it seems clear that some basic operations of Jain scriptural analysis must have becn established earlier than the Anuyogadvarani, in one case w win the canon itself,32 and the history of the oldest scriptural commentaries, the Prakrit verse niryuktis, which play an important part in implementing the anuyoga process, does suggest that exegesis evolved in tandem with the gradual standardisation of the scriptures. According to the Avasyaka Niryukti, a commentary on the Avasyaka Sutra which has achieved virtual canonical status, a niryukti is "a treatise

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78 PAUL DUNDAS expounding a subject through example and illustration, reasoning and by relating causes and conditions."33 While tradition ascribes authorship of the niryuktis to Bhadrabahu who on balance of probability must have lived around the first century CE, these works have in fact been subject to a process of interpolation and expansion and could hardly have been written in toto by one writer.34 Notoriously, the niryuktis can be so elliptical, constituting as they do "an interwoven and closed system having its own recurring devices,"35 that a further layer of commentary is often required to render them intelligible, and the extent to which they actually "commentate" on the sutra to which they are attached, in the sense of explicating difficulties, is frequently limited. It is the vrtti layer of commentary (sometimes called tika), chronologically the latest to be produced (c.eighth century onwards), albeit incorporating a great deal of earlier material, which corresponds most closely to western notions of exegesis qua the providing of a running explanation of the root text. The Jain position with regard to scripture and commentary upon it, of whatever type or period, is strongly predicated upon the acceptance of meaning as being superior to word.36 This can be seen clearly from the standard Jain etymology for the term "sutra" which would derive it from the root suc, "indicate."37 A sutra "indicates" many meanings which the teacher explicates through commentary, obtaining the sense from the root text in the same manner as a potter creates shapes from a lump of clay:38 A view consequent upon this, which is still to be found. today, is that, while scriptural explication is a necessary procedure, the meaning of the ancient texts, frequently characterised as being "secret" or "esoteric" (rahasya), should never be written down but revealed only in oral teaching by and to qualified ascetics in order to prevent unauthorised access to it.39 Counterbalancing this somewhat restricted attitude towards the potential audience for scriptural interpretation, some of the most significant Jain commentators such as Silanka (ninth century) and Malayagiri (thirteenth century) do not appear to have regarded themselves as merely engaging in acts of textual explication, and for them scriptural exegesis seems to have been a means of conferring merit upon those who heard or read it.40 As such, commentary could be linked by its practitioners with that compassion which informs the Jain conception of true religiosity.

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 79 SCRIPTURE AS UNCULTIVATED GROUND: THE COMMENTATOR ABHAYADEVA SURI It would appear to have been Haribhadra who was the first medieval Jain scholar to effect a shift away from the old Prakrit scriptural commentary model of the niryuktis, bhasyas and curnis to the production of large scale Sanskrit vrttis.41 However, Haribhadra only explicated a very few canonical texts and his personality, as least as far as the hagiographical narrative which clustered around his life is concerned, was not regarded as being defined by his exegetical activities. The other important early Sanskrit commentator, silanka, has left no biographical trace of himself, beyond an apparent allusion to his lineage affiliation.42 Although from the hagiographical point of view the most resonant event in the career of Abhayadeva Suri, the greatest of Jain exegetes, is his miraculous discovery of a buried image of the tirthankara Parsva at Cambay, his scriptural commentating is also a vital narrative component in most versions of his life. This is underscored by the fact that Abhayadeva is generally identified in Jain tradition by the epithet "commentator on the nine anga texts" (navangavrttikst). His importance for later Svetambaras can gauged by the vigour with which the two main subsects, the Kharatara Gaccha and the Tapa Gaccha, attempted to fit him into their respective lineages.43 Abhayadeva was appointed to the rank of suri, that is, a senior teacher authorised to interpret the scriptures, in 1063 and this also appears to have been the date when he embarked upon his ambitious commentarial enterprise. Ignoring the first two anga scriptures, the Acara and the Sutraksta, upon which Silanka had already produced famous vrttis, Abhayadeva commenced with the third anga, the Sthana, which contains an extremely wide range of subject matter, and produced what is probably his most valuable commentary.44 In his introduction and concluding prasasti to this work, Abhayadeva provides some interesting remarks on the factors which had prompted his task. He describes how for some reason there had been no previous exegetical activity upon the Sthananga so that, despite feelings of inadequacy, he had been emboldened, on gaining the permission of his senior contemporaries, to undertake a commentary upon it, consulting both the work of qualified scholars of the past and the resources of his own intellect.45 Abhayadeva acknowledges that there are mistakes (ksunani) in his vrtti, the reasons for which, apart from his self-deprecatingly avowed lack of learning, are illuminating. They include the absence of a proper teacher lineage (satsampradaya) - an "interpretative community," in other words - and the appropriate understanding (uha) which it could bring to bear

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80 PAUL DUNDAS upon the text, the multiplicity of recensions (vacana) of the scriptures, the corrupt nature of available manuscripts and the general difficulty of the sutra which had led to disagreement about its meaning. 46 These brief remarks by Abhayadeva provide corroboration of matters that other slightly later Jain writers were to deprecate, most notably the erosion of qualified authority to interpret the scriptures and enact their requirements.47 They also provide the necessary background to understanding the traditional hagiographies of Abhayadeva. There are six significant examples known to me. Although the two earliest were composed very near to each other in time, it is not easy to establish whether they derive from a common source, since they were produced to serve different purposes. The version written by Jinapala in 1248 is intended to demonstrate how Abhayadeva participated within the lineage of the Kharatara Gaccha and discomfited its temple-dwelling opponents,48 while the version of Prabhacandra, composed in 1277, lacks any strong sectarian bias and instead identifies Abhayadeva as one of a number of eminent Jain teachers over a period of one thousand years. 49 Shorter accounts of Abhayadeva's life are also to be found in three Kharatara Gaccha sources, the latest dating from the eighteenth century,50 and in the thirteenth century Puratanaprabandhasamgraha, whose version does not vary substantially from that of Prabhacandra.51 As Prabhacandra's version (PC) is both the most detailed and most selfcontained, it seems best to use this as the basis for discussion, adducing material from the Kharatara Gaccha accounts where necessary. After a description (PC, verses 4-100) of the defeat by Jinesvara Suri of the temple-dwelling monks in the court of Durlabha at Patan ini 1021, the establishment of an teacher lineage based on scripturally prescribed types of monastic lodging (vasatiparampara) and the subsequent appointment of Abhayadeva as a suri, Prabhacandra continues: At that time, because of the difficult situation of the region due to the depredations caused by famine, the doctrine was disrupted (siddhantas trurim ayasit) and the commentaries (vrttayah) disappeared. What scriptural texts (sutram) survived (Isat sthitam) then became uncultivated ground (khilam) in which the meaning of the regional (desya) words they contained was difficult to understand even for the wise. Then, one night, the tutelary goddess of the Jain doctrine, after making obeisance, spoke tirelessly to the master Abhayadeva, the lord of monks, who was staying in a religiously sanctioned lodging (dharmasthara),52 saying, "Previously the stainless (dhautakalmasa) silanka, famous by the name Kotyacarya,53 composed a commentary on each of the eleven (surviving) anga texts but, apart from the two commentaries (on the Acaranga and the Sutrakrtanga), they disappeared because of the malign influence of the times.54 So make an effort (in respect of composing new commentaries) in order to favour the Jain community." Then the suri replied, "Mother, how can I, who am slow-witted and foolish and whose mind is incapable of even considering the works (grantha) composed

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 81 by Sudharman, (do this)? The ancients have shown that if any incorrect (utsutra) scriptural interpretation is made, then there is great obtaining of the stain (kalmasa) which brings endless wandering through rebirth. However, your command cannot be disobeyed, so tell me what I am to do". Because he was confused as to his course of action, he did not receive an immediate?) answer. The goddess (eventually) said, "I speak (now) after reflecting upon your suitability for examining the meaning of the doctrine. So consider this. Whenever your mind experiences doubt (while composing the commentaries), I will always go to the continent of Mahavideha) and consult the tirthankara Simandhara. So be confident. Undertake this task and do not feel any doubt about it. I will come as soon as you think of me. I give a solemn undertaking about this at your feet." Having heard this, Abhayadeva began that task, although it was difficult, and started an acamla fast which was to end with the completion of the work.55 Then he completed the commentaries (vrttayah) on the nine angas and the goddess fulfilled the promise which she had made before. When the commentaries had been checked by eminent scriptural specialists (srutadhara), then senior laymen began the copying of manuscripts" (PC, verses 101-114). At this juncture the goddess provides an expensive ornament which is bought by the king in Patan, thus enabling further large scale copying of manuscripts and the gifting of them to Abhayadeva (PC, verses 115- 127). "So the commentaries on the nine angas written by Abhayadeva circulated and were keys to the lock (talakuncika) of the correct inner meaning (istatattva) (of the scriptures) which had been taught by Sudharman" (PC, verse 128).56 Prabhacandra continues by describing how Abhayadeva, through fasting, lack of sleep and intense exertion while working on his commentaries, was afflicted with a skin disease which was popularly ascribed to punishment for his incorrect interpretation of the scriptures. Eventually, the tutelary deity Dharanendra appears to the commentator and reveals to him the means to locate a lost image of Parsva, the curing of his illness being linked to his composition of a devotional hymn in honour of the tirthankara.57 The Kharatara Gaccha hagiographies have a rather different emphasis. According to Jinapala, the goddess came to Abhayadeva to inform him that the disease which he had already contracted could be cured by remedying the "defects in the understanding of) the nine sutras" (? nava sutrakukkutika),58 and that this could further be effected by locating the lost image of Parsva at Cambay. Jinapala describes how Abhayadeva, after his return to Patan, wrote his commentary in a lodging place (vasati) in the Karadihatti district of the city, thus linking him with the central event in early Kharatara Gaccha history, for it was there that Jinesvara Suri had stayed subsequent to his great debate with the temple-dwelling monks in Durlabha's darbar.59 As in Prabhacandra's version, Abhayadeva's exegetical difficulties are resolved with the aid of

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82 PAUL DUNDAS the tirthankara Simandhara, this time mediated by four goddesses who fly to the continent of Mahavideha to consult him.60 Two important narrative themes can be seen in the hagiographies of Abhayadeva: his contraction of leprosy, or some such disease, either before or after writing his scriptural commentary and the role of the tirthankara Simandhara in assisting in exegesis. In Prabhacandra's version, Abhayadeva's ailment is the result of a combination of exhaustion and his exiguous dietary regime undertaken in the course of producing his commentary, while one of the Kharatara Gaccha sources ascribes it to the fruition of some sort of negative karma.61 The later Kharatara writers combine these explanations and claim that Abhayadeva originally fell ill because of a dietary penance imposed by his teacher as expiation for a lapse in correct behaviour in preaching when he had overstimulated his audience through use of the rasa technique of traditional Indian aesthetics.62 The motif of suffering from leprosy and other such afflictions as a result of previous actions or through fasting is common in Jainism, with the universal emperor Sanatkumara and the princes Kandarika and Pundarika being famous examples of both possibilities.63 Jain poets, including Prabhacandra, also seem to have been largely responsible for the development of the famous story of the Hindu poet Mayura who became free from leprosy after praising Surya, the god of the sun.64In the particular case of Prabhacandra's account of Abhayadeva, there seems to be intended a parallel between the state of his bodily (anga) health and his production of commentary on the nine anga texts, and physical cure and retrieval of scriptural meaning can here be regarded as hagiographically linked. For both Jinapala and Prabhacandra, the two main hagiographers, an important element in validating Abhayadeva's exegetical activity is the connecting of him to elevated sources of Jain authority and his achievement is presented by them as not far short of that of the ganadharas, the disciples of Mahavira who successively redacted the scriptures.65 Of most marked significance in this respect is the association of Abhayadeva's commentary, or at least the solving of difficulties within it, with the tirthankara Simandhara who is, according to standard Jain tradition from approximately the beginning of the medieval period, currently living and preaching in the parallel continent of Mahavideha. 66 At the conclusion of an exemplary paper delineating the various components of the mythology of the future Buddha Maitreya, Padmanabh Jaini has drawn attention to a comparable Jain tradition concerning the future tirthankara at the beginning of the next world era (utsarpini), whose name is Mahapadma.67 Although there is much data scattered

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 83 around Jain literature delineating the names and careers of future tirthankaras in general, Mahapadma's interest to devotees always seems to have been comparatively restricted and he has now, and apparently had in the past, no significant part to play in practical religiosity. 68 Indeed, it would be most awkward were he required to provide some sort of devotional focus, for he is currently languishing in hell working out the consequences of negative karma accumulated in previous existences. In fact, it is Simandhara, the tirthankara of Mahavideha, who represents a closer Jain parallel to Maitreya. Of the four categories Jan Nattier has posited as typical of the various ways in which Maitreya has been represented throughout Buddhist civilisation in Asia, that of "there/now," in the sense of the future Buddha living in his Tusita heaven and yet in some way being accessible "at this very moment" to the faithful, as most famously in the case of the great Yogacara teacher Asanga, seems to correspond reasonably closely to the role medieval Jainism assigned to Simandhara.69 Although Nattier characterises contact with Maitreya as the result of mystical or visionary but nonetheless direct experience, while the Svetambara Jain sources suggest that of those not actually (re)born in the continent of Mahavideha only goddesses could have immediate access to Simandhara,7deg there is a clear point of contact between the two figures in a common role of helpers and inspirers of scholars and interpreters of the doctrine. 71 However, for our purposes, the most noteworthy point that emerges from the hagiographies is the centrality of scriptural commentary. The two main versions of Abhayadeva's life suggest that the real danger to the Jain community was perceived as lying not so much in the loss of the scriptures themselves (Prabhacandra makes clear that there were in existence at the time specialists familiar with their wording) as in the disappearance, whether from the effects of institutional disruption through famine or a decline in scholarly standards within the Jain ascetic community, of the commentarial tradition which enabled the scriptures to be understood.72 According to Prabhacandra, the problem was unconnected with doctrinal complexity but instead resulted from the often obscure Prakrit in which the sutras were written. While his reference to difficult regional (desi) words in the texts in part reflects the statements of contemporary, sometimes secular Prakrit writers who express doubts about the ability of their audience to cope with the lexical exotica which had been a stylistic feature of Maharastri Prakrit poetry since the time of Hala's Sattasai,73 there does exist evidence that the Jain scriptures had become increasingly inaccessible from the early medieval period. 74 Thus, Prabhacandra can describe them as being

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84 PAUL DUNDAS uncultivated ground when lacking the supporting exegetical material with which they could be interpreted. The hagiographies of Abhayadeva Suri mirror the gradual development within medieval Jainism of a process by which commentary gradually came to be viewed as agama, as a necessary component part of authoritative scripture as a whole, rather than being merely a secondary, ancillary element. That Abhayadeva himself was aware of the indispensability of commentary can be gathered from his remarks, which echo and borrow from an earlier Jain exegete, Jinabhadra Ganin (sixth century CE), about the derivation of the word "sutra." After giving the standard etymologies of the word from sutra, "thread" and suc, "indicate" (i.e., "sutra is that by which meanings are threaded or indicated"), along with sukta, "well spoken," in the sense of being well-established, inclusive and well-enunciated, Abhayadeva claims that "sutra" can also be derived from supta, "asleep" on the grounds that scripture is effectively unawakened when without a commentary.? DHARMASAGARA ON THE NECESSITY OF SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY Some five hundred years later, towards the end of the sixteenth century, Dharmasagara, one of late medieval Jainism's most significant intellectuals, also referred to the analogy of the inefficacious somnolence of the sutra which is without accompanying exegesis and developed the point still further by arguing for what is effectively the equal status of scripture and commentary.76 By his own account, Dharmasagara had a taste (ruci) for establishing Jain orthodoxy and confounding sectarians and all his major writings evince a near obsessive preoccupation with matters of correct ritual practice and lineage, consistently promoting the interests of the Tapa Gaccha, the lineage to which he belonged." The Pravacanapariksa ("Examination of the Doctrine"; henceforth PP), composed in 1575, is the only work of Dharmasagara's to have been consulted in any way seriously by scholars, but it has generally been utilised as little more than a source of chronological and doxological information concerning Jain sectarianism. Yet it is unquestionably Dharmasagara who has most to tell us about the attitudes of a very significant strand of Jainism towards the question of scripture and exegesis, his view on the relationship between the two being most strikingly expressed in the claim that an individual reading a sutra without a commentary is, as it were, attempting to open a locked adamantine casket with his teeth.78

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 85 Dharmasagara's overall approach to the Jain sutras is similar to that of fundamentalists everywhere towards sacred literature, in that he asserts the impossibility of their containing contradictions. The sutras are based on meaning which is of unified form because the tirthankaras who enunciated it were (and will be in the future) in a state in which all negative karma has been eliminated (ksayikabhava). However, this meaning will inevitably manifest itself in various ways, because both those who transmit it, the disciples of the tirthankaras, and those who hear it are in the nature of things of disparate attainments at particular times and situated in differing stages on the spiritual path. Those differences which do occur in the sutras, such as the occasionally conflicting information offered about the tirthankaras themselves, can therefore be ascribed to the varying karmic states (ksayopasamika) of the redactors and those who succeeded them. As a necessary result, scriptural texts on their own should not be regarded as constituting and providing fixed, settled doctrine (siddhanta), but instead, and in accordance with the manifold ways in which sutras manifest themselves externally, they should be conjoined with commentary in which all statements of the root-text are interpreted with as many connotations as possible according to the exegetical prescriptions of the hermeneutic manual, the Anuyogadvarani.79 Because there are also often key points of interest, relating to, for example, Mahavira's wife Yasoda or the wording of the confessional formula to atone for the unwitting destruction of life-forms while walking (iryapathiki), about which the sutras say nothing,80 Dharmasagara therefore invokes a broad exegetical principle which holds that "a commentary is another text belonging to a text" (granthasya granthantaram tika) and through which he can justify the status of commentary as continuing and amplifying a sutra by supplying information, otherwise not accessible within it.81 In the PP, Dharmasagara gives a number of bovine analogies to convey how scripture lacks efficacy in terms of its own nature alone and must instead have its meaning extracted from it through skilful and qualified interpretation. Glossing a story about a cow, its calves and a milker, he explains how the milch-cow is the sutra and the calves are the commentary (in this case, the niryukti variety). Just as the calves predispose the cow to give milk, so the niryukti makes the sutra disposed to yielding up its meaning. The man in the story who skilfully milks the cow is the commentator who is familiar with the canonically sanctioned modes of explanation and analysis (anuyoga).82 On the other hand, a person who undertakes to teach on the basis of scriptural texts without the necessary qualifications is, as it were, trying to milk an emaciated

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86 PAUL DUNDAS cow without feeding it grass, 83 while those heretics who base their interpretation of Jainism on the sutras alone are described as trying to drink milk from a dead cow.84 Dharmasagara's most sustained treatment of the methods of scriptural hermeneutics in Jainism is to be found in his treatise "One Hundred Verses on Rules for Interpreting the Sutras" (Sutravyakhyanavidhisataka; henceforth SVVS).85 This work derives much of its hermeneutic technique from the Anuyogadvarani. In common with it, the SVVS regards the Avasyaka Sutra as the model for scripture as a whole and commences by asserting the primacy of its opening portion, the Samayika, over all other sutras. 86 Dharmasagara then goes on to refer to an old, canonical list of qualities, possession of which serves to define a proper scriptural text, 87 the first two of which, "small extent" (appaggamtha; Sanskrit alpagrantha) and "voluminous meaning" (mahattha; Sanskrit mahartha) are of major importance for establishing the necessity of commentary, for "by mentioning these two qualities the various types of commentary (niryukti, bhasya, curni etc.) are to be understood, since the commentaries constitute the meaning of the sutras (tesam eva sutrartharupatvat)."88 That correct interpretation of the Jain scriptures is dependent upon properly constituted teacher-pupil succession is established by Dharmasagara by reference to the concept of adhikara. This well known term, whose earliest occurrence is in Vedic literature where it has the sense of both the ability and the desire to recite the Veda and is usually translated, by "right" or "authority," has recently been shown by Lariviere to have broader connotations corresponding to "responsibility" and "obligation" which fit well with the standard Jain view of a teacher's adhikara as not merely entitling him to interpret the scriptures but obliging him to do so as well.89 For Dharmasagara, the teacher's adhikara to interpret the meaning of the sutras lies in his ascetic restraint. But this adhikara is twofold, since it also requires a skilful and competent pupil, that is, one who has received proper ascetic initiation, to hear and understand the correct meaning expounded by such a qualified teacher. The necessity of this interpretative interchange ensures that Dharmasagara can dispose of a whole range of Jain sectarian groups on the grounds of their being inspired by self-appointed lay or quasi-monastic teachers who have no entitlement to inititiate followers. Dharmasagara warns that the destruction of Jainism will come about through the promulgation of what he calls pustakasiddhanta, a version of the religion which is based on the sutras alone, or some sort of reworking (anuvada) of them, and does not derive from the exegesis carried out by the only

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 87 authorised Jain "interpretative community," that is to say, properly appointed ascetic teachers and their initiated pupils.90 Jainism as a soteriological path (tirtha) is based on the entire corpus of scriptural writings (sruta), which includes, according to Dharmasagara, all the varieties of commentarial literature, and this corpus in turn derives from Mahavira himself. Rejection of commentary, then, effectively means rejection of the authority of the twenty-fourth tirthankara.91 The genre of commentary with which Dharmasagara is particularly preoccupied is the niryukti. However, it is not the antiquity of these texts or their supposed authorship by the ancient teacher Bhadrabahu which cause him to ascribe so much importance to them. Rather, it is the fact that the niryuktis describe or allude to early heretics who are not otherwise mentioned in any detail in the sutras, apart from mere reference in the Sthananga Sutra to their names and doctrines, the latter unintelligible without supporting explanation. All the developed Jain traditions about the ancient "concealors of the doctrine" (nihnava), one of whom, Jamali, is supposed to have been related to Mahavira himself, derive from the commentary literature and there is no alternative evidence for them.92 It may be that these commentarial stories are in part a retrospective attempt both to flesh out the history of the early Jain community and to identify and tighten up specific areas of doctrinal difficulty, but there is no question that for Dharmasagara they represent genuine evidence of the dangers that have continually beset Jainism throughout its history and provide supporting authority for the attacks upon medieval sectarian modes of Jainism mounted by him throughout his writings.93 So Dharmasagara can use such precedents to argue that a later Jain sect, the Paurnamiyakas, which dates from around the beginning of the twelfth century and attempted to redate the ritually important full-moon day, had been in fact already described with opprobrium in the early commentary literature.94 The heretics whom Dharmasagara seems to have regarded as the most pernicious, the anti-iconic Lonka (fifteenth century) and his immediate followers, could also be controverted by reference to the manifold references in the niryuktis to temples and images and, in particular, their foundation and installation by Bharata, the first universal emperor (cakravartin) of this world age. Lonka's unwillingmess to acknowledge such unimpeachable commentarial sources demonstrates his general rejection of authority within the Jain community and the fact that neither he nor his followers can be regarded as Jains. 95

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88 PAUL DUNDAS Dharmasagara's position, then, is that scripture lacks any possible autonomous existence without commentarial explanation and that to reject commentary on the sutras places one in the old scriptural category of "enemy of meaning."96 Sutra and niryukti must be regarded as interpenetrating each other so that there is effectively no difference between the two, and acceptance of the authority of a sutra of necessity entails acceptance of the authority of the commentary attached to it. 97 If this is so, then an obvious objection for an opponent, or indeed a critically-minded scholar, to raise is the status of the many interpolated (praksipta) verses found in the niryuktis. Medieval Jain scholars had always been aware that the niryukti layer of commentary had from an early period been interspersed with verses apparently interpolated from another layer of Prakrit commentary, the bhasyas, as can be clearly seen from the fact that manuscript tradition assigned different numberings to these interpolation.98 However, Dharmasagara regards any questions of possible inauthenticity and a consequent watering-down of the authority of the Prakrit verse commentaries through extensive interpolation as immaterial. He points to the fact that the Bhagavati Sutra, the most extensive scriptural exposition of Jain metaphysics, has incorporated huge portions of other canonical scriptures without any diminution of its authority. Furthermore, Dharmasagara claims somewhat circularly, since the Jain community depends on the totality of scriptural tradition (agama), it would hardly have approved any interpolations contrary to that. Because interpolations. have been made by the great teachers of the past such as Bhadrabahu and, subsequently, Vajrasvamin (second century CE?), who have the authority (adhikara) to do so, the scriptures and commentary upon them should be regarded as having been strengthened by the process.99 As has been mentioned above, Dharmasagara follows Abhayadeva Suri's commentary on the Sthananga Sutra and proposes multiple etymologies for the term "sutra" (from suc, "indicate," sukta, "well spoken" and supta, "asleep"). This polyvalency, involving three different meanings, is not, he argues, in any way inappropriate, since a sutra is defined precisely by its voluminous nature (maharthata) and multidimensionality (sarvatomukhatva) 100 Only full commentarial explication can bring this out. If a sutra did not have this necessary amplification, it would quite simply not be a sutra.101 As nothing doctrinally significant is described in a commentary which does not also occur in a sutra, viewing commentary as authoritative and equivalent to the word of the tirthankaras is for Dharmasagara the same as possessing the central Jain religious attitude of samyaktva, or correct disposition. Mithyatva,

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 89 or false belief, comes about when one does not believe every syllable preached by the Jinas.102 Unfortunately, heretics fail to appreciate that inference, rather than mere literalist reliance on a root text, is often required in order to see the authority of commentary, as a result of which their sutra-derived standpoints are based on merely a crude, transactional (vyavahara) model of reality. 103 CONCLUDING REMARKS: SCRIPTURE, COMMENTARY AND SVETAMBARA JAINISM The production by Abhayadeva Suri of his commentaries upon the nine angas appears to have been regarded by contemporaries as a defining doctrinal point for medieval Svetambara Jainism, the moment when apparent inexorable decline was arrested and a standard for correct understanding and practice reconfirmed. Ironically, the danger which Dharmasagara saw himself as combatting at the end of the sixteenth century was not inability to understand the sutras but an all too eager desire to read them and attempt to put them into practice. In rejecting the literalist lay-inspired approach to scripture which ignored the guiding assistance of authoritative ascetic-derived commentary, effectively the only instrument by which heresy could be kept at bay, and in advocating in hardline fashion the centrality of correct teacher succession, Dharmasagara clearly believed, like the desert fathers of early Christianity, that only those qualified by virtue of their spiritual practice were entitled to interpret the scripture. 104 To invoke more recent Christian history, Dharmasagara might well have recognised a similar situation in respect to sacred texts in the European Reformation, of which he was a near contemporary, where an original reforming doctrine of "sola scriptura" was soon counterbalanced by the understanding that scripture had to be protected from maladroit interpretation by various exegetical institutions, thus ensuring that in the last resort it could and should only be fully understood by the specialist. 105 As Abhayadeva Suri himself pointed out, lack of a commentary is not sufficient in itself to establish the non-canonicity of a sutra. 106 It is also obvious enough from examining manuscript catalogues that by no means all copies of the Jain scriptures were transmitted in the late medieval: period with accompanying exegesis. During the twentieth century, a variety of perspectives about the manner in which scripture should be presented have been present within the Jain community and the question has sometimes led to serious tension within the dominant Svetambara subsect, the Tapa Gaccha. So, one party, associated with the renowned

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90 PAUL DUNDAS preacher Ramcandra Suri (1895-1991), has argued that the scriptures should not be published at all, a view which found many partisans, while the other party followed the views of Sagarananda Suri (1875-1950), celebrated as "the uplifter of the scriptural tradition" (agamoddharaka), who advocated the publication of the scriptures but along with the old niryukti and vrtti commentaries. 107 However, both these apparently mutually exclusive standpoints can be regarded as tradition-inspired and as relating to the prevention of totally unrestricted access to scripture, with Ramcandra reiterating the claims of exegetical exclusivity centring around oral exposition by qualified senior monks and Sagarananda echoing the views of his lineage "predecessor" Dharmasagara about the absolute necessity of commentary.108 More recently, another perspective has emerged with the founding of the "Jaina Agama Series" in 1968 to publish critical editions of the scriptures. Editorial activity is being carried out by monastic and lay scholars, with no western input, and reflects modern academic preconceptions, according to which religious traditions do not merely have sacred books but scientifically validated editions of sacred books which can facilitate unmediated access to a tradition's "original message."109 Yet, even in a critical enterprise of this nature, the guiding hand of the medieval exegetes can not be avoided. To mention two examples: the text of perhaps the most important Jain scripture, the Avasyaka Sutra, does not exist, as its editors realised, in any manuscript independent of surrounding layers of commentary from which it has to be extracted, 110 while the edition of the Sthananga Sutra has been stated by its editor to be ultimately dependent on the readings provided in Abhayadeva Suri's commentary.111 Wilfred Cantwell Smith has recently suggested that the contemporary western world's understanding of the category of scripture is outmoded and that, instead, we should now approach scripture as a human activity, realising that it is the manner in which people treat and react to a particular text which renders it sacred. 112 Although Smith holds that part of this process will entail that conceptual boundaries between types of texts will become less fixed, he demurs at whether the question of what he calls "the widespread scripture/commentary phenomenon" can be settled, merely pointing in passing to the fact that some traditions have drawn less sharp distinctions between sacred text and exegesis than others. 113 Nonetheless, Smith's point is well made. Critical scholars and advocates of an atemporal literalism alike will always call for a "back to the scriptures" approach, but those who would wish to consider at the deepest level Jainism, or any religious tradition which involves

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 91 sacred texts, would do well to reflect on the extent to which religions as encountered today should be deemed as being the product not so much of their scriptures as of their adherents' exegetical activities. NOTES I would like to thank the British Academy for awarding me a grant which enabled me to carry out research towards this paper and John Cort for his comments on a draft version of it. 1 See Colette Caillat and Ravi Kumar, The Jain Cosmology, Basle/Paris/New Delhi: Ravi Kumar, 1981. In some late medieval Jain representations, this lokapurusa is depicted as female. Cf. Friedhelm Hardy, The Religious Culture of India: Power, Love and Wisdom, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 23, who refers to the Jain "World Woman". For body symbolism in religious traditions in general, see Jane Marie Law (ed.), Religious Reflections on the Human Body, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. Note that in this paper "Jain" signifies "Svetambara image-worshipping (murtipujaka) Jain", unless otherwise specified. 2 Dharmasagara, Pravacanapariksa 8.112, Surat: R sabhdevji Kesarmalji Svetambar Samstha, 1937. 3 See Paul Dundas, The Jains, London and New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 64 and Suzuko Ohira, A Study of the Bhagavati Sutra, Ahmedabad: Prakrit Text Society, 1994, p. 31. For a seventeenth century example, see Yasovijaya, Dharmapariksa, ed. Vijayabhuvanabhanu Suri, Mumbai: Sri Amdheri Gujarati Jain Sangh, v.s. 2041, p. 116. 4 Sri Nami Jina Stavan, verse 8, in Anandghan Caubisi, ed. Bhamvarlal Nahta, Jaipur: Prakrt Bharati Akadami, 1989, p. 149: curni bhasya sutra niryukti vrtti parampar anubhav re / samay purusnam amg kahya e je ched te durbhav re. This verse is quoted by Sadhvi Sudarsanasri, Anandghan ka Rahasyavad, Varanasi: Parsvanath Vidyasram Sodh Samsthan, 1984, p. 54. 5 See Dharmasagara, Pravacanapariksa 8.54-5. For Lonka, see Dundas, The Jains, pp. 211-15. Another Svetambara roughly contemporary with Lonka, Paravacandra Sari, also seems to have rejected the authority of scriptural commentary, yet remained an image-worshipper. This at any rate is one of the major criticisms of him by Dharmasagara, expressed at Pravacanapariksa 11.5. * Jayacarya, Bhagavati-Jor, two volumes, ed. Acarya Tulsi and Yuvacarya Mahaprajna, Ladnum, 1981 and 1986. Compare also the ritually important Kalpa Sutra which is understood by Jains to consist of both Prakrit root text and Sanskrit and vernacular commentary. See John E. Cort, "Svetambar Martipujak Jain Scripture in a Performative Context", in Jeffrey R Timm (ed.), Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992, p. 178 and Dundas, The Jains, pp. 57-9. 7 Kendall W. Folkert, Scripture and Commentary: Collected Essays on the Jains, ed. John E. Cort, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993, p. 68. 9 John B. Henderson, Scripture, Canon and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Henderson suggests (p. 65) that the origins of commentary may plausibly be traced back to the interpretation of omens, oracles and dreams in various ancient and preliterate societies. In this context, it is noteworthy that Trawick compares the Tamil exegete with whom she studied Manikkavacakar's Tirukkovaiyar to a spirit medium. See Margaret Trawick, "Ambiguity in the Oral Exegesis of a Sacred Text: Tirukkovaiyar

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92 PAUL DUNDAS (or, The Guru in the Garden, Being an Account of a Tamil Informant's Responses to Homesteading in Central New York State)", Cultural Anthropology, 3, 1988, p. 318. 9 Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, P: 55. 10 A notable recent exception to this is Francis X. Clooney, S., J., Theology after * Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, where full recognition is given to Advaita Vedanta's status as a commentarial tradition. 11 Cf., for example, William Smyth, "Controversy in a Tradition of Commentary: The Academic Legacy of al-Sakkaki's Miftah Al-'Ulam", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 112, 1992, pp. 588-97. 12 Grace G. Burford, Desire, Death and Goodness: The Conflict of Ultimate Values in Theravada Buddhism, New York/Bern/Frankfurt am Main/Paris: Peter Lang, 1991. 13 Francis X. Clooney, S. J., Thinking Ritually: Rediscovering the Purva Mimamsa of Jaimini, Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, 1990. 14 See Norman Cutler, "Interpreting Tirukkural: The Role of Commentary in the Creation of a Text", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 112, 1992, pp. 549-66 and Philip Lutgendorf," The View from the Ghats: Traditional Exegesis of a Hindu Epic", Journal of Asian Studies, 48, 1989, pp. 272-88. Compare also the collection of essays in Jeffrey R. Timm (ed.), Texts in Context: Traditional Hemeneutics in South Asia. 15 Thomas B. Coburn, Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the DeviMahatmya and a Study of its Interpretation, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991, p. 119. 16 As is well known, the validity of authorial intention has proved highly controversial in recent western literary criticism. However, the necessity of taking intention into account is to some extent reemerging in critical discourse. See Annabel Patterson, "Intention", in Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (ed.), Critical Terms for Literary Discourse, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, pp. 13546. In the South Asian context, John Powers, Hermeneutics and Tradition in the Samdhinirmocana-sutra, Leiden/New York/Koln: E.J. Brill, 1993, pp. 11-12, note 22 and p. 142, note 5, asserts that Buddhist hermeneutics is predicated upon the belief that it is possible to determine, or present, plausible theories about an author's original intention. Compare George C. Adams, Jr., The Structure and Meaning of Badarayana's Brahma Sutras (A Translation and Analysis of Adhyaya 1), Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993, p. 3, whose "concern is not with what Sankara, Ramanuja, or other theologians have said about the Brahma Sutras, but what the Brahma Satras themselves say", and also Christopher Key Chapple, "Reading Patanjali without Vyasa: A Critique of Four Yoga Sutra Passages", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 62, 1994, p. 87, for the possibility of insight into "Patanjali's original intention" when the Yoga Sutras are read in sequence, without commentarial inter vention. 17 See Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (ed.), Buddhist Hermeneutics, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988 and also Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Heart Sutra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998, p. 13 for varying motivations prompting commentary on a famous Mahayana Buddhist text. 18 See Charles Hallisey, "Recent Work on Buddhist Ethics", Religious Studies Review, 18, 1992, p. 280, for observations on Burford (op. cit.). Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, The Laws of Manu, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991, pp. lxx-lxxi, although respectful towards medieval commentators, argue for their obfuscation of the original "openness" of the Manusmrti.

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 93 19 The central Digambara Jain scriptures, the Sarkhandagama and the Kasayapahuda are comprised of root-text and commentary. See Dundas, The Jains, pp. 55-57. In the Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism, the Niddesa, an old commentary on part of the Suttanipata, seems to have been deemed canonical as a result of its antiquity. Certain explanatory texts in Mahayana Buddhism have had canonical status popularly attributed to them. See Jose Ignacio Cabezon, Buddhism and Language: A Study of Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994, p. 95. * See Dundas, The Jains, p. 53. 21 Dalsukh Malvaniya, Hindi introduction to Nisitha-Sutra, ed. Amar Chand and Kanhaiya Lal, Delhi/Varanasi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1982, p. 51. 22 Walther Schubring and Jozef Deleu, Studien zum Mahanisiha: Kapitel 1-5, Hamburg: de Gruyter, 1963, p. 25. 23 See Bhadrankaravijaya, Pratima Pujan, Madras: Svadhyaya Sangh, 1991, pp. 152-3 for a modern statement of this. According to Dharmasagara, Sutravyakhyanavidhisataka, ed. Muni Labhasagara, Agamoddharaka Granthamala Vol. 17, Kapadvamj, v.s. 2018, verse 77, "the Prakrit commentaries enunciated by the Jinas which have now disappeared in fact became) the canonical satras of extended meaning. Otherwise there would have been disappearance of the meaning of the sotras as a whole" (nijjuttibhasacunni jinimdabhania ya jau vucchinnalta vittharatthasutta annaha suttatthavuccheo). This statement is based on Dharmasagara's broad standpoint, to be discussed below, that the scriptural commentaries constitute the meaning of the sutras which are themselves only words. 24 See George D. Bond, "Theravada Buddhism and the Aims of Buddhist Studies", in A. K. Narain (ed.), Studies in History of Buddhism, Delhi: B. R. Pub. Corp., 1980, pp. 59-60 and the same author's "The Word of the Buddha": the Tipitaka and its Interpretation in Theravada Buddhism, Colombo: Gunasena, 1982, pp. 101-2. According to the Atthasalini of Buddhaghosa, Mahakassapa, one of the Buddha's greatest disciples, provided an extemporaneous commentary on the Abhidhamma section of the Tipitaka which formed the basis for later, orthodox Mahavihara understanding. See Ronald M. Davidson, "An Introduction to the Standards of Scriptural Authenticity in Indian Buddhism", in Robert E. Buswell, Jr. (ed.), Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990, p. 304. 25 Acaranga Sutra 1.5.6: (... je maham abahimane, pavaena pavayam janija, sahasammaiyae paravagaranenam annesim va amtie succa). I give the text of the reprint of the Agamodaya Samiti edition (which includes Silanka's commentary), Acarargasutram and Sutrakrtangasutram, reedited by Muni Jambuvijaya, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978, p. 152. Hermann Jacobi, Jaina Sutras, Part One, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884, p. 50, translates "parava garanenam" as "through the instruction of the highest", thus following silanka who glosses "parah tirthakrt tasya tena va vyakaranam yathavasthitarthaprajnapanam agamah paravyakaranam tena va janiyar". 26 See Nathmal Tatia, Studies in Jaina Philosophy, Varanasi: P. V. Research Institute, 1951, p. 54, Tatia points out that scripture was regarded as the virtual equivalent of the continuing physical presence of the liberating tirthankaras. 27 See Tatia, Studies in Jaina Philosophy, p. 48. Cf. Folkert, Scripture and Community, p. 47, for suyanana (the Prakrit equivalent of srutajnana) coming to have the sense of "transmitted knowledge." 28 See Nathmal Tatia, introduction to Taiken Hanaki (trans.) Anuogaddaraim, Vaishali: Bihar Research Institute of Prakrit, Jainology and Ahimsa, 1970, p. vi. Note that the source of the tirthankaras' knowledge is not srutajnana but omniscience (kevalajnana) which, unlike srutajnana, is free of the occluding influence (avarana) of any type of karma.

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94 PAUL DUNDAS 29 Haribhadra on Nandisutram, Prakrit Text Series Vol. 10, ed. Muni Punyavijaya, Varanasi/Ahmedabad: Prakrit Text Society, 1966, p. 1: tatrapi srutapradane saty api navijnatarthad eva tasmad abhilasitarthavaptih praninam ity atah prarabhyate 'rhadvacananuyogah. 30 See Nalini Balbir, Avasyaka-Studien: Introduction generale et Traductions, Altund Neu-Indische Studien 45,1, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993, pp. 305-6. Balbir proposes the translation "adequation". 31 Translated by Hanaki (see note 29). 32 See Bansidhar Bhatt, The Canonical Niksepa: Studies in Jaina Dialectics, Leiden: Brill, 1978. 33 Avasyaka Niryukti, verse 86, translated by Tatia, introduction to Hanaki, Anuogaddaraim, p. xxv. For a general characterisation of niryukti, see Balbir, Avasyaka-Studien, pp. 39-41 and for a survey of their contents, see Mohanlal Mehta, Jain Sahitya ka Brhad Itihas, Bhag 3: Agamik Vyakhyaem, Varanasi: Parsvanath Vidyasram Sodh Samsthan, 1989, pp. 56-116. Traditionally, ten niryuktis were written, although only eight have survived. It is not clear why some satras had niryuktis attached to them and not others, although some sort of original notion of core canonicity was possibly involved. Dharmasagara, Mahaviravijnaptidvatrimsika, in Muni Labhasagara (ed.) Dharmasagaragranthasamgrahah, Agamoddharaka Granthamala Vol. 18. Kapadvamj: Mithabhat Kalyancand Pedhi, v.s. 2018, p. 16, quotes a verse which he ascribes to the lost Suryaprajnapti Niryukti, although on inspection it turns out to be Sutrakrtanga Niryukti, verse 125. 34 Dharmasagara, Pravacanapariksa 8.148, p. 150, is aware of the fact that Bhadrabahu did not write the niryuktis as such but partly constructed them out of preexisting material. 35 Nalini Balbir, "Jaina Exegetical Terminology: Pk. vibhasa "Detailed Exposition"", in Rudy Smet and Kenji Watanabe (ed.), Jain Studies in Honour of Jozef Deleu, Tokyo: Hon-no-Tomosha, 1993, p. 67 and cf. the same author's Avasyaka-Studien, pp. 56-63. 30 Note, however, that in the early medieval period at least this was not regarded as legitimising any possible translating or rewording of the Ardhamagadhi scriptures. I . discuss this matter in a paper on Jain attitudes to Sanskrit to be included in a volume on the ideology and status of the Sanskrit language to be edited by Jan Houben. 37 See, for example, Sutrakstanga Niryukti, verse 3: ... bhave suttam iha suyagam nanam (see Jambuvijaya's reedition of the Sutrakrtanga Sutra mentioned in note 25, p. 2); Haribhadra on Avasyaka Niryukti, Bherulal Kanaiyalal Kothari Dharmik Trast, V.S. 2038, p. 16, verse 19: sucanat sutram: Santi Suri, Ceiyavamdanamahabhasa, Bombay: Jina Sasana Aradhana Trast, v.s. 2043, verse 18: suyanamettam suttam and Jinapati Suri on Jinesvara Suri, Satsthanakaprakarana, ed. Muni Sukhasagara, SrijinadattasOripracinapustakoddhar Phand Vol. 34, Surat: Jinadattasari Jnanbhamdar, 1933, 3.1: sutram arthavisesasucakatvadilaksanam. yad uktam, suyanamittam suttam, suijjai [sic] kevalo tahim attho tti, jam puna se vakkhanam, ayariya parikahanti. For a similar etymology by the Theravadin Buddhaghosa, see W. B. Bollee, Studien zum Sayagada 1: Die Jainas und die anderen Weltanschauungen vor die Zeitwende, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1977, p. 31. 38 Nisithabhasya, verse 5232, curni: jaha egato pimdao kulalo anege ghadadiruve ghadeti evam ayariyo egao suttao anege atthavigappe damseti. See Kanhaiyalal and Amar Chand (ed.), Nishith Sutram: Part IV, Delhi/Varanasi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1982, p. 30. The analogy is perhaps slightly more pointed in the Jain context where speech is viewed as a substance. 39 See John E. Cort, "Svetambar Murtipujak Jain Scripture in a Performative Context", p. 185 (see note 6 above) and the final section of this paper.

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM The content of the Jain scriptures is often characterised as being "rahasya", a word which most normally means "secret" but can also correspond to "inner essence". See, for example, Mehta, Jain Sahitya ka Brhad Itihas, p. 5, for this latter meaning. In modern North Indian vernaculars, the sense of rahasya can very often also be "mystical". As the contribution by Muni Jambavijaya to the recent volume in honour of Jozef Deleu (see note 34; pp. 1-12), there was published an article compiled on the basis of the English version of the Gujarati general introduction to the first volume of the Jaina Agama Series (Muni Punyavijaya et al. ed., Nandisuttam and Anuogaddaraim, Bombay: Sri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya, 1968). On p. 18 of the original Gujarati version, there occurs a reference to the "rahasyamayta" (i.e. "secret nature") of one section of the scriptures, the Chedasutras. This has been rendered in the English version (p. 25) as "mystical nature", to which in the Deleu Volume version has been appended (by the editors?) in square brackets "sic". Few texts less mystical in tone than the Chedasutras could be imagined and in fact the reference to their "rahsyamay" nature most likely derives from the traditional view that these texts which delineate orthopraxy and law often contain exceptions to general rules about behaviour, interpretation of which had to be handled cautiously and unguided access to which was restricted. See Dundas, The Jains, p. 154. For the structure of the Chedasutras, see Colette Caillat, "Le genre du sutra chez les jaina", in Nalini Balbir (ed.), Genres Litteraires en Inde, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1994, 73-101. pp. See Silanka, conclusion to his commentary on book one of the Acaranga Sutra, Jambavijaya reedition p. 212: krtvacarasya maya tikam yat kim api samcitam punyam/tenapnuyaj jagad idam nirvrtim atulam sadacaram. See also Mehta, Jain Sahitya ka Brhad Itihas, p. 355 and p. 402, for similar statements by Malayagiri. 41 95 Folkert, Scripture and Community, p. 243, See Mehta, Jain Sahitya ka Brhad Itihas, p. 330, for the sutras upon which Haribhadra wrote commentaries. 42 At the end of his commentary on chapter one of the Acaranga Sutra (Jambuvijaya reedition, p. 54), Silanka contextualises it as relating to real practice by describing the ascetic initiation ritual. The wording suggests that he saw himself as belonging to the Vajra sakha of the Kotika Gana. According to Mehta, Jain Sahitya ka Brhad Itihas, p. 39, Silanka belonged to the Nirvrtti Kula. At the beginning of his commentary, Sianka describes his indebtedness to an earlier explication (vivarana) of the first chapter by Gandhahastin, for whom see Mehta, Jain Sahitya ka Brhad Itihas, p. 351. 43 See Paul Dundas, "The Marginal Monk and the True Tirtha", in Smet and Watanabe (ed.), Jain Studies in Honour of Jozef Deleu, p. 258. In his commentary prasastis, Abhayadeva describes himself as belonging to the Candra Kula, a prestigious lineage apparently dating from early medieval times which later Svetambara sectarian groups attempted to incorporate into their own traditions. 44 For a rough chronology of Abhayadeva's commentaries, see Mehta, Jain Sahitya ka Brhad Itihas, p. 366. 45 See the Sthananga Sutra with Abhayadeva's commentary, in Sthananga Sutram and Samavayanga Sutram, reedited by Muni Jambavijaya, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985, p. 1. 46 Ibid., p. 352. Abhayadeva suggests that the wise should follow that meaning which is in accord with the general tenor of Jain doctrine and make corrections accordingly. 47 See Paul Dundas, "The Tenth Wonder: Domestication and Reform in Medieval Svetambara Jainism", Indologica Taurinensia, 14, 1987-8, 181-94. Jinapala, Yugapradhanacaryagurvavali, in Kharataragaccha-Brhadgurvavali, ed. Jinavijaya, Simghi Jain Granthamala Vol. 42, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1956, pp. 6-9. 48

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96 PAUL DUNDAS 49 Prabhavakacarita, ed. Jinavijaya, Simghi Jain Granthamala Vol. 10, Ahmedabad/Calcutta, 1940, pp. 161-66. 30 Vrddhacaryaprabandhavali, in Kharataragaccha-Brhadgurvavali, p. 90 and Kharataragacchapattavalisamgraha, ed. Jinavijaya, Calcutta, 1932, pp. 23 and 45. $1 Ed. Jinavijaya, Simghi Jain Granthamala Vol. 2, Calcutta, 1936, pp. 95-6. Cf. also Merutunga's Prabandhacintamani, trans. Charles Tawney, Calcutta Asiatic Society, 1901, p. 133, for a very brief account of the story put in the context of the biography of the alchemist Nagarjuna. 52 The translation in clumsy but intended to convey that Abhayadeva was not staying in a temple, which would otherwise mean he was a lax caityavasin monk. 53 For Kotyacarya and his possible identification with silanka, see Balbir, AvasyakaStudien, p. 78. 54 The standard enumeration would normally list twelve angas but Jain tradition accepts that the Drstivada disappeared some time before the fifth century C.E. 55 This involves the exclusive consumption of sour, unappetising food. 36 For the words tala and kuncika, see Oskar von Hinuber, Sprachentwicklung und Kulturgeschichte: Ein Beitrag zur materiellen Kultur des buddhistischen Klosterlebens, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz: Franz Steiner, 1992, pp. 16-17. Although not directly relevant to this paper, the conclusion of Prabhacandra's version exemplifies a theme found elsewhere in medieval Svetambara hagiography, namely the subordination of learning to the requirements of devotion. 38 Cf. in the same context in the Vrddhacaryaprabandhavali the Prakrit expression "suttassa kukkadio chodanattham." I assume that the Prabhavakacarita text must be emended to "navasutra-" and that Abhayadeva is being asked to solve or remove the "kukkutika" affecting the nine sutras on which there were no commentaries available. At present, I am uncertain as to the precise significance of kukkutika/kukkadi. Ratnachandra, An Illustrated Ardhamagadhi Dictionary, Bombay, 1923, s.v. kukkudi, gives the meanings "deceit, fraud". Cf. W. B. Bollee, Materials for an Edition and Study of the Pinda- and Oha-Nijjuttis of the Svetambara Jain Tradition, Volume II: Text and Glossary, Beitrage zur Sudasienforschung, Sudasien-Institut, Universitat Heidelberg, Vol. 162, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994, p. 180, who glosses the word as kukkuti. Muni Jambuvijaya (personal communication, Palitana, September 1994) has tentatively suggested a connection with kuta, "defective", referring specifically to the Gujarati introduction to Namdisuttam and Anuogaddaraim, ed. Muni Punyavijaya, Jaina Agama Series Vol. 1, Bombay: Sri Mahavira Jain Vidyalaya, 1968, p. 16, note 2, where Abhayadeva is quoted as referring to the difficulties of commenting on the Prasnavyakarana Sutra owing to the corrupt manuscripts of the text (prayo 'sya kutani ca pustakani). It is conceivable that the forms kukkutika/kukkadi may have resulted from some sort of confusion between kuta and ku-krta, "badly done" or the abstract kaukrtya. However, it is noteworthy that the expression "sutrakukkutika" also occurs in Abhayadeva's commentary on Haribhadra's Pancasaka, Bombay: Nirnayasagar, 1912, 8.22, pp. 143-4, in the context of a description of the ritual for image-installation, where it seems to refer to the four threads hanging down from an auspicious parasol (subhapurnacatracatustantukavaststah purnam sutrakukkutikapuritam yac catram tarkus tasya sambandhi yac catustantukam tantukacatustayam tat tatha). However, there is no suggestion here that the threads (sutra) are entangled which might have facilitated taking the Prabhavakacarita reference as some sort of pun, e.g., "the thread-like entanglements affecting understanding of the sutras". - 59 Yugapradhanacaryagurvavali, p. 4, translated by Phyllis Granoff, The Clever Adulteress and Other Stories: A Treasury of Jain Literature, Oakville/New York/London: Mosaic Press, 1990, p. 177. Jinapala makes a further sectarian point by describing

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 97 how Drona, whose assistance in completing the commentary on the Sthananga Sutra was acknowledged by Abhayadeva himself (Sthananga Sutra, Jambavijaya's reedition, p. 352), was a temple-dwelling monk who abandoned his lax habits through having his inadequate scriptural knowledge corrected by reading Abhayadeva's commentary. See Phyllis Granoff, "Going by the Book: The Role of Written Texts in Medieval Jain Sectarian Conflicts," in Smet and Watanabe, Jain Studies in Honour of Jozef Deleu, p. 321. 60 Yugapradhanacaryagurvavali, p. 7.. 61 PC, verse 130 and Vrddhacaryaprabandhavali, p. 90. 02 Kharataragacchapattavalisamgraha, pp. 23 and 45. For the inappropriateness of preaching in this way, see the early seventeenth century Devavimala Ganin, Hirasaubhagya, ed. Shivadatta and Kashinath Sharma, Kalandri: Sri Kalandri Jain Sve, Mo. Samgh (reprint), v.s. 2041, 10.119, autocommentary. 63 For Sanatkumara, see V. M. Kulkarni, A Treasury of Jain Tales, Ahmedabad: Shardaben Chimanbai Research Council, 1994, pp. 33-4 and for Kandarika and Pundarika, see the entry under "Pumdariya" in Mohan Lal Mehta and K. Rishabh Chandra, Dictionary of Prakrit Proper Names: Part 1, Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Series Vol. 28, Ahmedabad, 1970, p. 459. 04 See G. P. Quackenbos, The Sanskrit Poems of Mayura edited ... with the text and translation of Bana's Candisataka, Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series Vol. 9, New York 1917, introduction. 65 See Yugapradhanacaryagurvavali, p. 7 and PC, verse 128. 66 See Dundas, The Jains, p. 230. 07 See Padmanabh Jaini, "Stages in the Bodhisattva Career of the Tathagata Maitreya," in Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (ed.), Maitreya: The Future Buddha, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 79. 08 This has been heroically collected by Nalini Balbir, "Tirthankaras of the Future," in M. A. Dhaky and Sagarmal Jain (ed.), Aspects of Jainology, Vol. 3: Pt. Dalsukhbhai Malvania Felicitation Volume 1, Varanasi: P. V. Research Institute, 1991, pp. 27-67. Representations of Mahapadma appear to be rare. However, at least one modern temple, in this case in Udaipur, has the future tirthankara as its presiding image (mulnayak). See Sri 108 Jain Tirth Darsanavali, Palitana: Sri Anilbhai Gamdhi, 1990, pp. 204-5. 69 See Jan Nattier, "The Meaning of the Maitreya Myth: A Typological Analysis," in Sponberg and Hardacre (ed.), Maitreya: The Future Buddha, pp. 29-30. 70 According to Digambara Jain tradition, the great teacher Kundakunda was physically transported to Simandhara's presence. See Dundas, The Jains, pp. 230-1. 71 Cf. N. Ross Reat, The Salistambha Sutra, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993, p. 3. For the connection in Buddhism between scriptural interpretation and visionary experience, see Donald S. Lopez (ed.), Buddhist Hermeneutics, p. 8 and Jose Ignacio Cabezon, Buddhism and Language: A Study of Indo-Tibetan Scholasticism, p. 233, note 16. 12 The specific reference is to the lost commentaries of Stlanka. Steven Collins, "On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon," Journal of the Pali Text Society, 15, 1990, pp. 96-99, has argued that the writing down of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures and the commentaries upon them, usually ascribed to the effects of the difficult times brought about by war and famine, was most likely prompted by issues of sectarian dispute and royal patronage within the Sinhalese sangha. 73 Some Prakrit poets state that they have deliberately omitted dest words from their compositions. See Kodhala, Lilavai, ed. A. N. Upadhye, Simghr Jain Granthamala Vol. 31, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1966, verse 41: "paviraladesisulakkham kahasu kaham divvamanusayam" and Mahesvara Suri, Nanapamcamikahao, ed. A. S. Gopani,

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98 PAUL DUNDAS Simghl Jain Granthamala Vol. 25, Bombay, 1949, verse 4: "gudhatthadesirahiyam sulaliyavannehim gamthiyam rammam / paiyakavvam loe kassa na hiyayam suhavei." Cf. also H. C. Bhayani, "Another Rare Specimen of Archaic Jain-Maharastri": Taramgavasgaha of Padalipta," Sambodhi, 7, 1978-9, p. 115, note 5, for the author having left out of his abridgement of an earlier text dest words which were in abundance in the original. 74 The most obvious example is the tradition that Siddhasena Divakara wished to translate the scriptures into Sanskrit to facilitate their availability. See Phyllis Granoff, "Buddhaghosa's Penance and Siddhasena's Crime: Remarks on Some Buddhist and Jain Attitudes towards the Language of Religious Texts," in Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen (ed.), From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion, Oakville/New York/London: Mosaic Press, 1991, pp. 17-33. Nathmal Tatia, introduction to Hanaki, Anuogaddaraim, p. viii, suggests that Prakrit was so ambiguous that it required some sort of analytical commentary. Cf. also note 101. 75 Abhayadeva's commentary on Sthananga Sutra, Jamb vijaya's reedition, p. 35:, sutryante sucyante va 'rtha aneneti sutram, susthitatvena vyapitvena ca susthuktatvad va suktam, suptam iva va suptam, avyakhyanenaprabuddhavasthatvad iti. He then quotes as the source for this interpretation ("bhasyavacanam tv evam") two Prakrit verses, for which see Jinabhadra Ganin, Visesavasyakabhasya, ed. Nathmal Tatia, Vaishali: Research Institute of Prakrit, Jainology and Ahimsa, 1972, verses 1370-1 (identified as 1368 and 1369 in the appendix to Jambovijaya's reedition, pp. 374 and 408): simcai kharai jam attham tamha suttam niruttavihina va / suei savai suvvai sivvai sarae va jen' attham (1370) and avivariyam suttam piva sutthiyavavittao va suttam ti / jo suttabhippao so attho ajjae jamha (1371). It has become customary for scholars of Theravada Buddhism to derive Pali sutta not from an original Sanskrit sutra but instead from sukta. Such an etymology would imply that the suttas were understood by the early Buddhists as equivalent to, and by their ethical content superior to the hymns (sukta) of the R8 Veda. In a recent article, Oskar von Hinuber, "Die Neun Angas: Ein Fruher Verzuch zur Einteilung Buddhistischer Texte," Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde Sudasiens, 39, 1994, pp. 131-2, has cast doubt upon this derivation, pointing out that Buddhist tradition preserves no memory of it. 70 For a list of Dharmasagara's writings, see Labhasagara Ganin's edition of his Sarvajnasataka, Agamoddharakagranthamala Vol. 18, Kapadvamj, v.s. 2024, pp. 910. 77 Pravacanapariksa (for details, see note 2) 8.160, p. 219: yatha sampraty api madrsasyapi tathavidhoktaprakarena karmaksayopasamavaicitryat kupaksikavikalpitamargatiraskarapurvakatirthavyavasthapane rucih. For further general observations on Dharmasagara, see Dundas, The Jains, pp. 123-24. 78 Mahaviravijnaptidvatrimsika (for details, see note 33), verse 25. 79 PP 8. 145-7 and pp. 219-220. Cf. also Balbir, Avasyaka-Studien, p. 41, for the niryukti layer of commentary completing and developing a satra but not contradicting See PP 8.78, p. 89 and 8.162, p. 220. The earliest source for the Tryapathikr confessional formula is the Avasyaka Niryukti, a commentarial text. Dharmasagara wrote a treatise, the Iryapathikidvatrimsika, Agamodayasamiti Vol. 49, Limvdt, 1927, to establish what he felt to be the correct procedure for this ritual, wanton misinterpretation of which he attributed to the Paurnamiyaka sect. In the Sutravyakhyanavidhisataka (see note 23) p. 79, Dharmasagara rejects the view that a topic which does not occur in a sutra can therefore not appear in a niryukti. 81 See PP 8.148, p. 162 and 8.162, p. 220, sodasasloki (text in Dharmasagaragranthasamgrahah; see note 33), p. 116 and Sutravyakhyanavidhisataka, p. 90. 82 PP 1.53-4, pp. 41-2. Cf. Nandisuttam and Anuogaddaraim, Jaina Agama Series

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 99 edition, introduction, p. 49, and for another bovine analogy, see Balbir, AvasyakaStudien pp. 307-9. 83 PP 1:54, p. 42. 84 PP 1.56, p. 43. Cf. also PP 1.79, p. 53 for a satra being like a bull which follows the path of whoever leads it. 85 Emend the reference under SVVD in Dundas, The Jains, p. 259. 86 SVvs, verse 3 and compare PP 8.145. See also Ohira, A Study of the Bhagavati Sutra p. 30. 87 SVV, p. 4. For this list, see Nalini Balbir, "The Perfect Satra according to the Jainas," Berliner Indologische Studien, 3 1987, pp. 3-21. Abhayadeva refers to this list in his commentary on the Sthananga Sutra (Jambuvijaya's reedition p. 4). There is a parallel list of 32 scriptural defects (dosa) described by SVVS, pp. 4-7 which derives from the Anuyogadvarani. 88 SVVS, p. 4 and cf. pp. 79 and 90. 89 See Richard W. Lariviere, "Adhikara-Right and Responsibility," in Mohammad Ali Jazayery and Werner Winter (ed.), Languages and Cultures: Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polome, Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 1988, pp. 35964. For the adhikara of the Jain teacher involving non-contradiction of the meaning of the tirthankaras, see Malvaniya, Hindi introduction to Nisttha Sutra, Vol. 1, p. 53. For Vedic adhikara, see Charles Malamoud, Le Svadhyaya: recitation personelle du Veda: Taittiriya-Aranyaka, Livre II, Publications de l'Institut de civilisation indienne Vol. 42, Paris, 1977, pp. 67-70, and for adhikara in general, see Wilhelm Halbfass, Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991, pp. 66-74 and Purushottam Bilmoria, "Is Adhikara Good Enough for "Rights?"," Asian Philosophy, 3, 1993, pp. 3-13. 30 See SVVS, pp. 8-10, and compare also pp. 81-2 for books, that is, copies of the scriptures, serving merely to improve the knowledge of ignorant monks studying with an appropriate teacher. For anuvada of the scriptures being satisfactory on a crude, transactional level (vyavahara) but not on the more profound (niscaya) level, see SVVS, pp. 53-61. The PP devotes much time to attacking those who would make Jainism a "religion of the book." See, in particular, PP 1.49-50, 59-64, and 84-7, as well as chapter 8, passim. 91 Dharmasagara claims (SVVS, verse 8, with autocommentary) that the anuyoga method of exegesis is used in the Bhagavatt Sutra, which is jinavacana. 92 SVV, verses 21-38. Of the various heretics described in the main early commentarial source, the Avasyaka Niryukti, only the Digambaras are mentioned by name, the rest being alluded to in general terms (SVVS verse 21: tesu vi nijjuttiie namaggahena dusi[o] khamano / sesa paravanae niamenam dusiya humti). Dharmasagara, as do most modern scholars, identifies the Botika sect described in the Avasyaka Niryukti with the Digambaras. M. A. Dhaky and Sagarmal Jain, "A Propos of the Botika Sect," in Dhaky and Jain (ed.), Aspects of Jainology, Vol. 3: Pt. Dalsukhbhai Malvania Felicitation Volume, pp. 131-39, have argued that this group more likely represents the Yapaniyas. 93 For the early Jain heresies, see Paul Dundas, "Food and Freedom: The Jain Sectarian Debate on the Nature of the Kevalin," Religion, 15, 1975, p. 188, note 8. The Sthananga Sutra, sutra 587, Jambuvijaya's reedition, p. 273, lists the nihnavas and their places of origin. The Bhagavati Sutra seems to refer to Jamali's heretical teaching about the nature of action, albeit without mentioning his name. See Ohira, A Study of the Bhagavati Sutra, pp. 147-8. 94 SVVS. verse 31, with autocommentary which cites Avasyaka Niryukti, verse 470, the first half of which refers to Jinadasa, a merchant of Mathura, and provides an explanation by citing Haribhadra's commentary (in fact, on verse 468). The story

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100 PAUL DUNDAS tells how Jinadasa, who fasted on astami and caturdast days, was imitated by his two bulls, Kambala and Sambala. Since this narrative occurs in the broader context of Mahavira's pre-enlightenment biography as treated by the Avasyaka Niryukti, Dharmasagara points to the fact that Jinadasa must have been a lay follower of Mahavira's predecessor Parsva, which he takes as establishing the time-honoured nature of religious observances on caturdasi days, a practice which the Paurnamiyakas were trying to emend. Cf. also SVVS, p. 79. 95 SVVS, verses 37 and 42 and pp. 28 and 41. See also PP, chapter 8, passim. 96 SVVS. p. 34. The Sthananga Satra, satra 208, Jambovijaya's reedition, pp. 113, describes three categories: inimical to scripture, inimical to its meaning and inimical to both. According to Abhayadeva, "meaning" here signifies the niryukti commentary. 97 SVVS, verses 38-9 and compare PP 8.64, p. 75. See Johannes Bronkhorst, "Two Literary Conventions of Classical India," Asiatische Studien / Etudes Asiatiques, 45, 1991, pp. 212-16, for the aphoristic satra texts produced in the early common era becoming embedded within commentaries. 98 See Balbir, Avasyaka-Studien, pp. 45-6. Ludwig Alsdorf, "Jain Exegetical Literature and the History of the Jaina Canon," in A. N. Upadhye et al. (ed.), Mahavira and his Teachings, Bombay, 1977, pp. 1-8, argued that the bhasyas are a versification of the early Prakrit prose commentarial tradition as represented by the curnis. This view has recently been challenged by B. K. Khadabadi, "Reflections on the Jaina Exegetical Literature," in Dhaky and Jain, Aspects of Jainology, Vol. 3: Pt. Dalsukhbhai Malvania Felicitation Volume, pp. 27-33. 99 SVVS, verses 41-2, with autocommentary. The scriptures involved in this process (the Jivabhigama, Nandi and Prajnapana Sutras) do not belong to the anga class of sutra. Their incorporation into the Bhagavati Sutra was presumably effected at one of the councils where the scriptures were redacted. 100 SVVS, p.38 and p. 79. Dharmasagara exemplifies the polyvalency of Prakrit by discussing a riddle verse, the solution to which requires taking the word "saro" as equivalent to Sanskrit sara, "arrow," saras, "lake" and svara, "voice". Cf. also PP 8.146. It might be added that by the seventeenth century the Jain scriptures had come to be accused of imprecision and indeterminacy of meaning. See Satya Vrat, Studies in Jaina Sanskrit Literature, Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1994, p. 181. 101 SVVS, pp. 86-99, discusses how information given in a sutra, in this case the Prajnapana, can only be understood and contextualised fully with the aid of commentary. 102 SVVS, p. 41 and verses 48-9. 103 SVV, pp. 73, 79 and 91-2. Dharmasagara quotes a verse from the Pancavastuka which states as a hermeneutic principle that the scriptural should be interpreted by scripture and that which is amenable to logic by logic (tam taha vakkhanijjam jaha jaha tassa avagamo hoi / agamiam agamenam juttigammam juttie). See Haribhadra, Pancavastuka, Mumbai: Jinasasana Aradhana Trast, v.s. 2045, 4.191. 104 See Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 23. In the Jain context, cf. the Oghaniryukti, ed. Bollee (see note 58), verse 611, for correct behaviour stabilising the meaning of a satra (suttatthathirikaranam vinao ...). 105 See Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 142-4. For a recent perspective on this subject from an American Protestant background, see Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scriptures: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993, the main contention of which is that (p. 3) "the Bible is not and should not be accessible to merely anyone, but rather it should only be made available to those who have undergone the hard discipline of existing as part of God's people." According to Hauerwas (p. 27), (sola

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SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN SVETAMBARA JAINISM 101 (sola scriptura) preserves intact the distinction between text and interpretation, while the Catholic conception is in danger of ascribing to an interpretation the value of an authoritative text. ... When sola scriptura is used to underwrite the distinction between text and interpretation, then it seems clear to me that sola scriptura is a heresy rather than a help in the Church. When the distinction persists, sola scriptura becomes the seedbed of fundamentalism, as well as Biblical criticism. It assumes that the text of the scripture makes sense separate from a Church which gave it sense." 106 See Abhayadeva on Haribhadra, Pancasaka (for details, see note 58), 1.44, pp. 33-4, where he points out that a sutra like the Aupapatika which does not have a niryukti or curni commentary attached to it is still to be regarded as canonical (arsa). 107 For some remarks on this dispute, see Marcus Banks, Organizing Jainism in India and England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 110. 108 Strictly speaking, Dharmasagara is not a direct predecessor of Sagarananda Suri, since the Sagara lineage was disrupted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, there is clear evidence that Sagarananda felt there to be some sort of linkage between them. See, for example, his impassioned Sanskrit encomium to Dharmasagara in the introduction to Saparisista Sri Tattvataranginitikanuvada, Dabhos: Sri Muktabhai Jnanmandir, no date, pp. 5-6. Dharmasagara's writings seem to have been suppressed even during his lifetime and in recent times have largely been kept in circulation by the minority Sagara lineage of the Tapa Gaccha, being little studied by the numerically dominant Vijaya lineage. 109 For a critique, see Colette Caillat, "The Recent Critical Editions of the Jain Agama," in Fritz Steppat (ed.), XXI Deutscher Orientalistentag vom 24.bis 29 Marz in Berlin, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983, pp. 234_40. Another recent venture to publish the Jain scriptures, along with an accompanying Hindi translation, has been carried out since 1975 by the Svetambara Terapanthi sect which places a strong emphasis on Jainism as being located in the sutras. However, it is noteworthy that the ultimate authority for this edition is Acarya Tulsi, until 1995 head of the Terapanthis, who is described on each volume as "reciter" (vacaka) of the text of the sutra. 110 See Balbir, Avasiyaka-Studien p. 34. As Greg Schopen has reminded me, this is also true of the Patimokkha Sutta in Theravada Buddhism which was found by its first editors to be likewise embedded in commentary. ml See Thanamgasuttam and Samavayamgasuttam, Jaina Agama Series Vol. 3, ed. Muni Jambuvijaya, Bombay: Sri Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya, 1985, introduction, p. 56. 112 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What is Scripture?, London: SCM Press, 1993, p. 18. 113 Ibid., pp. 204-5. Department of Sanskrit, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.