Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

Page 59

Pravacanasara
of living beings, has preached five-fold caritra or conduct: sãmãiya, chedovaṭṭhāvana, parihara-visuddhi, suhuma-samjama and jahākhāda-caritta.1 Then are enumerated 28 mula-gunas and the uttara-gunas for the monks. The monk determines to avoid the breach of these vows. There is the usual prose passage at the end. ANAGARA-BHATTI: It contains 23 gäthas and there is a prose passage at the end. Here prayers are offered to all great saints endowed with merits. These saints, giving up the perverted view, have adopted the right one. Then their detailed virtues, in the light of Jaina enumerative technicalities, are given into groups from two onwards upto fourteen. These groups indicate a thorough cultivation of dogmatic details in the monastic community the members of which could easily grasp the details, when simply the groups are enumerated. These group-enumerations are on a short scale when compared with those found in Thanamga and Samavayamga of the Svetambara canon. This feature is seen even in Buddhist texts like Anguttaranikaya. Then various penancial practices and achievements of monks are described. The author entertains a pious desire that these prayers might bring him the destruction of miseries. This Bhakti gives a good idea of the ideal conduct expected from a Jaina monk.
AYARIYA-BHATTI:
26
It contains some 10 gāthās. Here we get a description of an ideal preceptor, who initiates others on the path of liberation. The great monks are described to be patient like the earth, pleasing like water, clean like the sky and undisturbed like the ocean. Then follows the prose passage in which the aspirant salutes the five dignitaries with their characteristics, and concludingly expresses his aspirations.
NIVVANA-BHATTI: It contains some 27 gāthās. Here we have an enumeration of Tirthankaras and holy personages with the places where they attained Nirvana; to them and to those places salutations are offered. This [p. 28:] Bhakti is important from the points of Jaina traditional mythology and geography. In the prose passage we are informed that Mahavira Vardhamana attained Nirvāņa, at Pävä, early in the morning, on Sväti-nakṣatra, at the end of the night of the 14th day of the black half of the month of Kartika, when there were still four years minus eight and half months (?) remaining of the fourth era.2 This passage is so similar in style that it can be put without any violation in the Svetambara Jaina canon in a particular context.
PAMCAPARAMETTHI-BHATTI: It contains 7 verses, the first six are
in Sragviņi metre treated as a Matra-vṛtta, and the last is a gatha. There is a prose passage at the end. Here we get the eminent characteristics of five dignitaries, and the aspirant hopes for eternal happiness.
CRITICAL REMARKS ON TEN-BHAKTIS. Thus we have eight Prakrit Bhaktis. In the case of Nandiévara-Bhakti and Santi-Bhakti, we have only the concluding
1 Compare Tattvärthasutra IX, 18.
2 The passage runs thus: imammi avasappinie caütthasamayassa pacchime bhae auṭṭha (addhattha?) masahine vasacaükkammi sesakālammi Päväe nayarie Kattiyamāsassa kinhacaüdasie rattie Sädie nakkhatte paccuse bhayavado Mahadi Mahaviro Vaḍdhamāņo siddhim gado; that means the fifth era began 3 years and 3 months and a half after the nirvana of Mahavira. Or autṭha might be taken as three and half as in Marathi.