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"A Slap on the Face of the Brahmins" Introducing a Little-Known Jain Text
of Polemical Objectives
Albrecht Wezler
1. In 1923 a pothi entitled Vedāsikušal was published in Ahmadabad as no. 5 of the Sri-Hemacandräcāryagranthavali. The editors were the Sravakapanditas Viracandra and Prabhudāsa. In the colophon the work is in fact called Dvijavadanacapeță Vedārkusah (sampurnah), and this expression is also used in the verse forming the conclusion of the text itself. Hence the oditors were most probably correct in their determination of its actual name: dvijavadanacapețā indeed looks very much like an addition intended to state explicitly the point which the author ultimately wants to make. That the result is a rather strange mixed metaphor does not seem to have bothered him, or the person who made the colophon.
1.1. The work clearly falls into two parts. The first part consists of 849 (numbered) verses which are introduced by višeşarp vină mahabharatadau / itihāsasamuccaye, i.e. in fact a note to inform the reader that the verses quolcd subsequently are taken from the 'Mahābhārata, etc., if no specification for the source) is given": itihasasamuccaye is the first of these
specifications' according to which the first two verses belong to the Itihāsasamuccaya, and they run thus:
srüyalar dharmasarvasvam śrutvā caivavadharyatam/ almanah pratikülāni pareşam na samācaret ///// slokārdhena pravaksyāmi yad ukia granihakoibhih/ paropakārah punyāya papaya parapidanam ///
Hence, these references, which always consist of the title of a particular work given in the locative, form a constituent part of the Vedärikuśa itself. The
