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 67

34
Pravacanasāra
a monk but a beast full of deceit and treachery and devoid of discipline and conduct (4-5, 12, 15-18). If a monk is unchaste, full of vanity, taking part in worldly activities and sins, and violates the religious virtues, he is destined to go to hell (6,9,10 etc.). [p. 36:] In a monk's appearance if one is unchaste, given to sinful thought, runs after and quarrels for food, one wanders long in samsāra (7-9). He is not a monk, though an ascetic in appearance, but a thief, who takes things unoffered and blames others (14). An ascetic, who eats at a harlot's and praises that food, acts like a fool, and is not a true monk (21).
SİLA-PÄHUDA: It is a discourse, in 40 gathās, on sila, meaning conduct, character, especially chastity. Knowledge and chaste life are not incongruent; if chaste conduct is wanting, objects of senses ruin that knowledge (2). Knowledge unaccompanied by chaste conduct, asceticism without right faith and austerities without self-control are all worthless (5). Even men of knowledge wander long in samsāra, because they are given to pleasures; but those who are chaste can easily put an end to samsāra after mastering the knowledge and practising austerities. If a man of knowledge, who is given to pleasures, can go to liberation, why is it that Surattaputta, though knowing Ten-pūrvas, went to hell? Knowledge, faith, austerities and conduct bring nirvāņa for them who lead a chaste life (7,9,11 etc. 30). It is not enough if grammatical, metrical, Vaišeşika, Vyavahāra (perhaps the same as Dharmaśāstra) and Nyāya Sāstras are studied (16);1 to make human birth fruitful, a chaste life must be led; and thereby one is loved by gods (15-17).
Chaste life, or sila, is an important factor of spiritual life; it has its attendant virtues like compassion to living beings, control, truthfulness, non-theft, celibacy, satisfaction, right-faith and knowledge (19). A dose of poison may entail death only once, but the dose of sense-pleasures involves repeated deaths and births in samsāra (22). Sila, with its attendant virtues, like fire assisted by wind, burns the deposit of old Karmas (34); and then the soul becomes Siddha endowed with all the virtues (35).
CRITICAL REMARKS ON EIGHT-PĀHUDAS-It has been ususal, possibly from the fact that Srutasāgara wrote a commentary en masse on six pāhudas, to take the six pāhudas in a group; and Chappāhuda came to be looked upon,2 through mistake, as the name of a work of Kundakunda. The last two pāhudas have not been, somehow or the other, commented upon by Srutasāgara. Taking into consideration the six pāhudas, or even eight pāhudas, it is clear from the contents that each pāhuda
As the texts of these Pähudas are not critically edited, and hence not definite, I have not taken into consideration the bearing of these gathäs on the date of Kundakunda; and, moreover, the date of our author, whose works are of a compilatory character, will have to be settled on other broader evidences than stray references like these; for, as Dr. Jacobi, in a slightly different context, puts it, 'Nothing is more common than that such details should be added as a gloss, or be incorporated even in the text, by those who transmitted it either in writing or in instructing their pupils'. (SBE, 22, Introduction pp. 39-40). See W. Denecke's essay in Festgabe Jacobi, p. 163 etc; perhaps Dr. Winternitz follows W.Denecke in his A History of Indian Literature, (in English) vol. II p. 577, which has just reached my hands. I am not aware of any commentary on six Pahudas by Amrtacandra, though Dr. Winternitz notes his name along with that of Srutasägara.