Bruhat Katha kosha

SR No.: 016060
Original Sutra Author: Harishen Acharya
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1943
Total Pages: 566
Language: Prakrit, Sanskrit
Classification: Dictionary & Dictionary
File Size: 16 MB

Page 48

İNTRODUCTION stress on their good or bad acts and their concomitant consequences in subsequent births. They are the tales of heroic deeds, namely, the pious and religious acts of men and women. “An Apadăna, like a Jataka, has both 'a story of the past' and 'a story of the present'; but it differs from a Jātaka in that the latter refers always to the past life of a Buddha, whereas an Apadāna deals usually, not always, with that of an Arhat." Many of them are good legends of saints, and some of them are identical with monks and nuns celebrated in the Thera- and Theri- gāthā. Usually they are related in the first person. Some of the names are quite historical, and a few of them like Sāriputta, Ananda, Rāhula, Khemā, Kisāgotami are well-known in the Buddhistic hierarchy from other sources. But most of the tales have a mechanical form and contents, and they appear to have been specially framed to glorify some pious act or the other. The great commentators like Buddhaghoșa and Dharmapāla quote plenty of legends both of the Jätaka and the Apadāna type in their various commentaries, and these constitute an important bulk of Buddhistic narrative tales. The tendency to uphold religious and ascetic ideals is quite patent in all these stories.
iv)
Jaina Literature
a) CANONICAL STRATUM
Turning to Jaina literature, the Ardhamăgadhi canon, though recast into its present shape much later, contains undoubtedly old portions which can be assigned quite near to the period of Mahāvīra, the last Tirthakara of the Jainas. We possess in this canon a good bit of narrative portion which is characterised by didactic and edifying outlook: it biographies of religious heroes such as Tīrthakaras and their ascetic disciples including the Salākāpuruşas, explanatory similes, parables and dialogues, and didactic and exemplary tales and pattern stories of men and women turning into monks and nuns and attaining better births in the next life.
The two texts, Acāranga and Kalpasūtra, give a biography Mahāvīra vividly describing the hardships which he had to undergo in his monastic life; and Bhagavati, in its different dialogues, gives some side-light on Mahāyira's personality, especially his skill in debates and in offering explanations in reply to the questions of his numerous pupils, male and female. The lives of other Tirthakaras, narrated in the Kalpasūtra, are no biographies at all, but supply the reader with a string of names (nāmāvali)
1 See for instance, Buddhist Legends, by Burlingame in Harvard O. Series,
vols. 28-30, Cambridge, Mass., 1921. 2 For the editions etc. of these texts the readers are referred to A History of Indian
Literature by Winternitz, Vol. II (Calcutta 1933) and Die Lehre der Jainas * by Schubring (Berlin and Leipzig 1935). For economy of space only essential bibliographical references are given.