Manuscript Illustrations Of Uttaradhyayana Sutra

SR No.: 007034
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: W Norman Brown
Publisher: American Oriental Society
Publication Year: 1941
Total Pages: 114
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & agam_aagamsaar
File Size: 11 MB

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THE PAST CANNOT BE REASSEMBLED
king, who in his turn had an investigation made. All was discovered, and the robber was slain. The painting shows a cave (or well) in a hill, identifiable as such by the peaks, in which are the mother and the child. Outside is a man, presumably the robber, seated on an impaling spike. On one of the mountain peaks is a parrot, which is a conventional accompaniment to an out-of-doors scene.
The painting in the upper register illustrates a story that illuminates stanza 3: “Like a robber caught in the hole he himself has made, the sinner perishes through his own work; so ..." A robber, having made a hole, felt the wall fall in upon him, and knew he was caught. The houseowner pulled at his legs from inside the house, and the robber's companion pulled his head and arm from outside, but he perished through the weight of the wall. The painting illustrates the story precisely.
5. DEATH AGAINST ONE'S WILL In this chapter Mahāvira preaches that people should avoid the worldly life that ends in unwelcome death, leading to rebirth, which again terminates in unwelcome death, always followed by renewed life in whatever state one's deeds determine. Death-bed repentance is of no avail in escaping from this cycle. Rather, people should follow the pious law, whether they are laymen or monks, and then death will not be unendurable but actually a stepping-stone to a happier state. The moral is contained in the last two verses (31-32): "When the time has come a believer, in the presence [of his teacher), should suppress all such emotion of fear or joy) and wait for the dissolution of his body. When the time has come to dissolve the body, the sage dies the death with one's will' in some one of the three ways." The three ways for a sage to die are listed in the commentaries: bhattaparinnā (bhaktaparijña), that is, rejection of food in consequence of obtaining knowledge, but permitting others to move his body for him; ingini, according to which he steps into a circumscribed place, not to emerge again, and making all bodily movements himself; pāovagamaņa, taken by Jacobi and Charpentier to be Skt. prāyopagamana "(motionless) going to death by fasting"; the Jain commentators consider it to be Skt. pādapopagamana "resorting to a tree (to await death)," where the monk stands unmoving like a tree.
The illustration in JM (fig. 14) shows the deathbed scenes of a layman and a monk. The layman lies on an elaborate bed and is himself dressed in rich raiment, while a woman is in attendance. Beside him are vessels. The monk is alone, lying on an outspread cloth, which is probably his outer robe, for he is wearing only his under garments. In HV (fig. 15) the scenes are similar, although the monk is on a mountain in a jungle, with deer playing about and tree-rats (Indian squirrels), which are quite out of proportion, climbing the tree trunks.
In DV (fig. 16) the corresponding illustration is wrongly attached to chapter 6. It
1 saddhi, Skt. śraddhin, a word to which PSM gives the meaning "lay disciple"; Jacobi translates it "faithful (monk)."
2 The Jains recognize altogether seventeen kinds of death; see in Charpentier, p. 296.
On these words see Charpentier's references to the Aupapātika Sūtra (ed. Leumann) 137, and to the Ācārānga Sūtra 1. 8. 8. 1 ff. (see Jacobi in SBE 22. 74 Å.). He also mentions J. J. Meyer, Hindu Tales, p. 101, note 1.