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Albrecht Werler
"A Slap on the face of the Brahmins"
497
remark that there are not a few Jains and Jains monks, and nuns, too, whom one cannot but pay deep respect for the degree of pious strictness they exhibit in observing in everyday life the rules and regulations of their own tradition.97
Notes
Yet, apparently, his primary aim here is not to mirror to the Brahmins their rules of conduct in order to make them realize how far they have actually diverted from them; it looks rather as though he selected such elements of Ilindu dharma, and for each a considerable number of relevant passages (also or perhaps primarily for the use of others), which fall in line with Jain ethics themselves! If this is correct, what he wants to intimate is, of course, that much of the truth of Jainism can also be found in brahmanical literature (which for that very reason can be drawn upon by him eclectically), but also that those injunctions, and they alone, need to be taken seriously and all practices contradicting them must be abandoned. But, again, this is a point in the present article that would call for elaboration which I am not able to offer right now.
In addition, the first part of the Vedänkuša stands out as a collection of dicta of great significance in terms of Indian ethics and history of ideas in general. And anybody is free to profit from Hemacandra's remarkably wide reading, and to take his compilation as an easily accessible treasury of which one can make use for oneself ad libitum, reading with much sympathy, nay delight, in spite of not being a Jain oneself, verses like the following (4b. 4rf.):
ekatahralavah sarve samagravaradaksinām (recte: onā)/ ekato bhayabhllasya prāņinah prāņaraksanam // idam eva purà devas tulayā samatolayan (recte: Cyal) / pränaraksanam eveha gauravenātiricyate II jarigamini ca bhūtāni sthivarani ca ye narah/ a timavat parirakganti e yanli paraman galin /.
1. The interpretation of this tide will be given later in the present article. Here I
would just like to mention that in a still unpublished doctoral dissertation (submitted to the University of Trivandrum) by N. V. Kunjamma, viz. "Rāmavarma-yaobhüşana by Sadasivadiksita: A Critical Edition and Study." a work entitled Nafarikura is mentioned, ascribed to a certain Uddanda Sistrin (ca. 15th century), in which the defects in certain practices in Küriyatam perfor mance are dealt with." In contradistinction to Vedärikula, in the title Nagarikuša
those who need to be urged with a goad are directly named. 2. Ed. by Jagajivan Utamacand sa, Palianastha-Srr-Hemacandracarya-sabhayah
Sekretart, Ahmedabad 1923 (number of copies: 250, prize 0-6-01!). This is however, already the second edition (dvidlyd dvrtti), and I don't know when the first was published; according to Prof. Dr. Chandrabhal Tripathi's communication this is the only edition of the text, and no commentary has come to light until
now, Prof. Tripathi did not also know of any studies on it. 3. Quoted below. p. 2. 4. It should, however, be noted that here, and in all the other instances when I use
the expression quote', the usual it is absent in the text(s) referred to 5. For months I have tried my very best to get hold of this text either in India or in
Europe, but until now without success. The only edition which I was able to find in bibliographies is that published in 1916 in Bombay by the Verkaçeśvara Press. According to what is said on this work in A. Holtzmann's Das Mahabharata und seine Teile, vol. 3, Kiel 1894, pp. 571., it seems to be a very interesting text, not only in terms of the reception of the Mahabharata in India, and it should therefore
certainly be reprinted. 6. I should add here that this article was written during a stay in Tokyo (April
1990), and that I was also a little restricted by the fact that it would simply have taken too much time to try to get hold of all the Sanskrit texts required. At the same time I should like to avail myself of the opportunity to thank Prof. Dr. Minoru Hara and Dr. Akira Yuyama for the assistance which they have kindly
I hope that, if not the present article as a whole, then at least this excerpt will convince the reader that the Vedänkusa is not the least valuable and interest ing work of the extraordinarily rich and vast Jain literature to the understanding and knowledge of which Prosessor Deleu has contributed so much. And as for the controversy between the Jains and the Brahmins, it is, I think. not unfair to quole a dictum of my friend S. A. Srinivasan's late father, Mr. Srinivasa Ayya Sastri, who used to say ironically that "occasionally one comes across a true Brahmin even in India," and to add on my part the