Amrita Collected Papers by A M Ghatage

SR No.: 006968
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Smarak Nidhi Ahmedabad
Total Pages: 530
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

Page 220

Didactic Works in Prākrit
211
commentary called Doghattītīkā at Bhrgupura and was revised by Bhadreśvarasūri. Another one is written by Rāmavijayaganin who gives at great length the stories explaining the allusions in the text.
A more bulky work is the famous Upadeśapada of Haribhadra who calls himself the son of Yākinī and who uses the catch-word Viraha at the end of his works, both the peculiarities being met with at the end of the present work. The work extends over 1039 gāthās written continuously without any divisions into chapters. Having saluted the Jina he expresses his wish to offer a few words of advice culled out from the scriptures preached by the Jinas for the enlightenment of men weak in intelligence. He starts with the fact that human life is difficult to get and illustrates it with examples which are taken from the scriptures. Similarly he deals with the right faith, the relation between the teacher and the pupil, the four types of intellect and their examples, the usual vows of non-killing and others and even enters into the technical field of Karmas and their workings. He concludes his work with the advice of serving the knowers of the doctrine, hearing their advice, giving of gifts, abstaining from tormenting others, not to entertain thought of pleasure, constant thought about the nature of the world, to honour worthy people, not to insult any one in the world to observe the rules of people, not to blame others; to have attachment towards virtue, not to associate with wicked persons, and always to avoid passions and carelessness.
But the major portion of the work is devoted to the summary statement of the stories to illustrate the various precepts, and in this Haribhadra follows the curious method of the Niryuktis in which only the most important facts of the narration are given in a mechanical way. The hints are sometimes so meagre that they remain obscure unless the reader is acquainted with the story which they profess to epitomise and naturally the commentator Municandra has given them at great length in Prākrit verses except for one long story of Ratnaśikha in prose. The source of all these tales given by Haribhadra is the story books of the canon and of later works the Āvaśyaka Niryukti, on which he has drawn not a little.
Unlike other works of Haribhadra the present work does not make a delightful reading both on account of its method of giving the stories in the most uninteresting manner and the consequent roughness of the language in which sometimes a mere string of uninflected words follow one another. Many of these stories are further mere suppositions without life in them as in case of the Drstāntas to point out the difficulty of obtaining human life.