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

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Nāy. I, 13, Nāy. 2, Pupph. and Pupphac.51 In XVI 5 the story is a little more furnished: Gangadatta does not approach Mv. in order to honour him but to make him arbitrate a dispute he had with another god; Sakka, having overheard that dispute and being jealous of Gangadatta's iddhi, rather comically albeit successfully endeavours to forestall that god by approaching Mv. with a question of his own. Gods questioning My. we also meet in V 44 and XVI 2
Parts of these stories have also been referred to in other canonical works: thus Aņutt., in BARNETT's translation p. 85, and Pupph. 1, 4 refer to Gangadatta, and Pupph. 1, 5 refers to Kattiya52 i.e. part of XVIII 2.
§ 21. Ordering Principles and Methods. After this brief analysis of the different kinds of texts of which the nucleus of the Viy. is composed I now return to the main subject of this introduction, viz to the question how this miscellaneous construction came into being. Now, in the first instance, the whole problem practically narrows down to this other question: can we in this apparently incoherent mass of closely set small pieces recognize something like a mosaic or at least the traces of a planning and ordering hand ?
As a matter of fact, so I already pointed out, the one agent that will as a rule determine and realize the coherence even of a compiled work, viz a logically continuous train of thought, is totally absent in the nucleus sayas of the Viy.53 True, an association of ideas once in a while accounts for the sequence of two texts. Thus the notion ‘moisture' was associated with the notion 'water' in I 65-6, 'lifeless' with 'death' in II 14-5; two texts on the topic 'embryology' were inserted between two texts on the topic 'sexual intercourse' (II 51-4), an exposition of the different kinds of ‘opponents', among others the opponents of the Jaina Elders, was made to follow on an episode relating an
SI Cf. the AUTHOR, Nir. Introduction p. 79.
52 In Nir., Introduction p. 88 n. 34 I suggested that the Kattiya story probably originally belonged to Aņutt. 4; see also note 43.
53 The rare portions of the nucleus where such logical continuity is found (e.g. V 71-5, VIII 9) therefore are rather suspect.
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