Early Jainism

SR No.: 001520
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: K K Dixit
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1978
Total Pages: 120
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Agam, Canon, & Philosophy
File Size: 7 MB

Page 41

Early Jainism
for chapters VIII and X they only lay down certain broad etbical Injuncti. ons obligatory on a monk, injunctions too broad to be a part of the specific subject-matter of Dasavaikalika. And the first two chapters- both quite brief--are placed when they are for no apparent reason. Thus chapter I is made up of 5 verses whose central import is that a monk gathers alms without causing any harm to the donor just as a black bee gathers sap from a flower without causing any harm to it. Similarly, chapter II made up of 11 verses upon the problem of worldly temptations in general and womanly temptation in particular but its five verses (6-10) are a literal reproduction from the Uttarādhyayana story of Rājīma and Rahanemi (ch.22), a reproduction containing so many specific references to this story that it is incomprehensible to one not already conversant with it. Lastly, there remain two appendices. Of these the first made up of 18 proseformulae and 17 verses addresses consolations to a depressed monk, the second made up of 17 verses describes a monk in a most general fashion as do chapters VIII and X. This much information should suffice to enable us to form a general idea of the overall contents of Dašavajkalika -as also an idea of wbat constitutes its kernel and why. The text represents the historical stage of evolution when a clear-cut distinction between the ebical problems of a disciplinary Dature and those of a more general nature had begun to dawn on the thought--horizon of the Jaina theoreticians, but the two sets of problems were yet thought to be so closely related to one another that a joint treatment of them was deemed possible and advisable (the same might be said of Uttaradhyayana even if its preoccupation with the ethical problems of a disciplinary nature is relatively meagre). It was only later on that two different sets of texts were devoted to these two sets of ethical problems, and it is viewed in this light that the kernel of Daśavaikālika ought to be those parts of it which make this text a pro. totype of the later monastic disciplinary texts.
With Uttaradhyayana and Dasavaikälika there comes to an end an important earlier stage in the growth of Jaina thought, a stage whose beginning was marked by the speculations that now stand recorded in Ācārānga I and Sūtrakrtānga I. It is in this capacity that these four canonical texts are worthy of a closer study. A number of features pertaining to form as well as content are characteristic of them and it is time that attention be paid to these features. Three of them are outstanding:
(i) Thus a noteworthy thing about our texts is a predominance in them of the old Vedic metres like Trişțubh, Jagati and Anuqfubh. As is well known, in classical Sanskrit as well as Pali Anuştubh was the metre more