Agam 05 Ang 05 Bhagvati Vyakhya Prajnapti Sutra

SR No.: 001628
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jozef Deleu
Publisher: DE Tempel Brugge
Publication Year: 1970
Total Pages: 372
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Agam, Canon, & agam_bhagwati
File Size: 19 MB

Page 43

Gangeya's questions at Vāņiyaggāma29 give Mv. an opportunity not only to prove that he is perfectly conversant with Pārsva’s conception of the universe, but also to contend that he has discovered the same truths independently. Among the different sects constituting the milieu of Mv.'s teaching the Elders and monks of Pārsva's creed (Pásávaccijja thera resp. aņagāra) in point of fact occupy a privileged position. They are not actual dissidents: at one time, as we saw, Mv. approves of the tenets their Elders taught his own lay followers (II 55). Pārsva's conception of the shape and the eternity of the world probably was a much cherished dogma with his followers, for Mv. also discusses it with a group of Pāsávaccijjā therä in V 94. These too are converted or rather, as is always the case with Pāsâvaccijjas, admitted to the Jaina order of monks by merely expressing the wish to change over from the fourfold dharma' to 'the dharma of the five vows and confession' (cāujjāmāo dhammão panca-mahavvaiyam sappadikkamanam dhammam uvasampajjittānam).41
Kālodāi, as we saw, was an annautthiya, probably an Ajiviya (see $ 18). Siva of Hatthiņāpura42 at the same time represents Mv.'s royal audience and that vast community formed by all sorts of anchorites living, in his day, on the banks of the river Ganges; after his abdication the king enters the order of the disapokkhiyā tāvasā, one of the numerous sub-species of vāņapatthā tāvasā the list of which has also been handed down in Uvav. and Pupph. His conversion results from the fact that Goy. proves his alleged extraordinary wisdom to be altogether incomplete.
Jamāli's story43 is the account of the first heresy in the history of the Jaina Church. Descended from a noble race at Kuņdaggāma44 Jamāli became a disciple of Mv., who was his uncle
41 Cf. also Sūy. 2, 7, 40; Utt. XXIII 87; et passim. 42 Hatthiņāpura (Hastinā°): cf. Dey, Geographical Dict. p. 74.
43 Probably the Jamāli episode originally belonged to Antag. 6 (cf. Thāņa 505a) and was inserted in the Viy. for the same reason as was the Gosāla episode; see also note 52.
44 Kundaggāma ("grāma) or Kundapura, a northern suburb of Vesäli: mod. Basukund (deest GIP); cf. Dey, Geographical Dict. p. 107. Jamāli and Mv. were both born in the ksatriya part of that town (Khattiya-K.).
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