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 42

Uttaradhyayana and Daśavaikalika
33
usually employed in texts meant for popular edification, but the classical Jajna authors writing in Prakrit adopted the metre Arya for the purpose. In our texts, on the other hand, it is Anuştubh that gradually gains predominence, it being more frequently employed by Uttaradhyayana and almost exclusively in Dasavaikālika; (as for Arya it here occurs thrice--in Ācārānga I chapter 9, Sūtrakstānga I chapter 4, Uttarādhyayana chapter 8 - but in an old form while stray stanzas in classical Arya that make their appearance in Uttarādhyayana are usually interpolations from later texts - as is shown in details by Alsdorf). The conclusion ought to be that in their cho. ice of metre the authors of our texts were yet exhibiting the same tendency as their contemporary Brahmanical and Buddhist counterparts, and the fact that this sharing of a tendency was absent with the later Jaina authors argues the relative antiquity of our texts.
(11) A second noteworthy feature of our texts is their vigorous advocacy of asceticism. Some sort of vigorous advocacy of asceticism was never to be absent from Jaina speculation, but what makes our texts a class by themselves is their firm rejection of the possibility that pious life might somehow be led by a householder. It seems that in those olden days the intellectual elite of the Aryan community was divided precisely over the question whether a householder can possibly lead a pious life. The Brahmanical authors came out with an answer in the affirmative, the monastic authors like those who composed our texts with an answer in the negative. Eventually Jaina authors made some concession to the rival viewpoint and the conciliatory trend of thought appears in a stray fashion even in Uttaradhyayana, but the very fact that it appears here in a stray fashion argues its relative recency.
(iii) A third noteworthy thing about our texts is their marked unfami. llarity with the Jaina technical concepts so well known to any student of Jainism, In four chapters of Uttarādhyayana -viz, 28, 33, 34, 36 - such technical concepts make their appearance on a mass scale - so to say. But the very fact that hardly few of these concepts are employed elsewhere in our texts argues the relative recency of these concepts. It will not do to say that the early Jaina authors were familiar with these concepts but that they had no occasion to employ them, nor to say that the early passages employing these concepts happened not be transmitted to the later generations. For in these early days of division of camps within the Aryan community it would have been only natural for an author to make a parade of his armory of technical concepts and for a later editor to pounce upon the passages where such a parade was made. It is really remarkable that our texts so free of the Jaina technical concepts were deemed worthy of higher respect by the later authors whose own stock of such concepts was pretty stupendous. This remarkable phenomenon is itself a testimony to the relative antiquity of our texts.