Repetition In Jaina Nrative Literature

SR No.: 269673
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Klaus Bruhn
Publisher: Klaus Bruhn
Total Pages: 49
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 6 MB

Page 34

60
Klaus Bruhn
The list is not very homogeneous, but it supplies elements of a narrative and dogmatical grammar to which narrative repetition and related phenomena ultimately belong. We may add that (6)-(8) stand for a cluster of techniques which all produce what we would like to call « concatenation of terms >> (explicandum - explicans, definiendum - definiens, term - synonymous term, term - related term %, and so on). It is, however, difficult to define concatenation. One has to study the issue within the limits of a work or a group of related works (S 20) in order to ensure a minimum of cohesion.
What matters is not the specific form of the list items mentioned above) but the idea that a peculiar type of repetition is a member in a family of concepts, or a chapter of a book with more than one chapter. Apart from that we can relate repetition as studied in this paper to the subject of $ 18.
It has been emphasized more than once that repetition is a formelement in narrative literature (folktale etc.). But repetition as we find it in our texts clearly shows scholastic influence. Nor is this unexpected. In Jaina literature, there was often little difference between fiction and non-fiction, so that intellectual attitudes influenced narrative literature (and also hymnology). The Jaina doctrine favoured processes such as multiplication, repetition, classification, tabulation and explication. There were no limits to elaboration and inventiveness, and this produced numerous sub-doctrines within the doctrine (description of the world. theory of karma, theory of leśyās, etc.). The world was extended in the direction of the micro-cosmos and it was also extended in the opposite direction. Here then, was the speculative milieu which produced, in the course of an almost explosive process, also quasi-scientific forms of narrative repetition.
§ 20. The Concept of Frame
The study of an individual work or text has many advantages, and these are so obvious that it seems hardly necessary to go into details. There is uniformity (sometimes more, sometimes less) in language, in metre, in style, in syntax, in structure, in content, in topics, and in phraseological units. But even if a work stands alone, being not too closely connected with other works, one feels that there is some wider literary context which should also be considered. This consideration leads us to larger units such as genres and « literatures » e.g. Jaina literature or early Jaina literature. It is useful to study the vocabulary of a work, but it is still better to study the vocabulary of a genre or a literature.
90. D. ADOLF VON HARNACK, Dogmengeschichte, 7. Aufl., p. 465 (M. LUTHER's criticism of scholastic clusters such as iustificatio, sanctificatio, vivificatio, regeneratio, etc.).