Agam 05 Ang 05 Study Of Bhagvati Vyakhya Prajnapti Sutra

Author(s): Suzuko Ohira
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

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sixteen more years but Gosala will die within seven days. (12) Gosala becomes mad, and in that condition formulates the eight caramas and the four panakas; he dies by confessing that MV alone is a jina but not he himself; his death cermony. (13) MV becomes sick from an attack of bilious fever on the way of wandering tour, which worries his disciple Simha because of Go'sala's forecast; MV dispels his worry and sends him to Revati to get a chicken killed by a cat cooked for him instead of two pigeons that she is about to prepare for him; MV regains his health. (14) Future rebirth and liberation of Go'sala.
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Many scholars have already made critical studies and historical evaluation of this text.** We should remember here that the doctrines and history of the early Ajivikas are not preserved on the side of the Ajivikas but are available only through the opponents' literature, either the Buddhist or the Jaina. The Bhagavati text above therefore reflects the Jaina view of Go'sala as the leader of the rival school offered in the fifth canonical stage, when the Jainas gained strength while the Ajivikas lost theirs. Ajivika school was probably a stronger sect than Jaina school until A'soka's reign at least, and the Jainas must have faced severe pressures from the Ajivikas. This text was composed when the Jainas did not need to worry at all about the repercussion from their opponents who had already lost their battle. We should also recall here that the Jainas probably absorbed the Ajivika lay rules into theirs in the final canonical stage (cf. 7.5.329 in D-2c).
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A point of interest in this story is the ending portion pertaining to MV's meat eating. This item 13 is a fiction made up in relation to Go'sala's prophesy, therefore its historicity can well be doubted. MV here ordered a chicken killed by a cat, instead of the two pigeons she was especially preparing for him. MV was therefore going to take meat which was not especially killed for his sake, thus abiding by his own teaching of ahimsa by way of three karanas, and safeguarding the prohibitory rule of adhakarma.
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The Acara 1.9.4.509 reads that MV, who ate less, was never attacked by diseases, and that he never desired to have medical treatment when wounded or not wounded. Its 516 informs us that MV, having entered a village or a town, begged for food which had been prepared for somebody else. According to MV's teaching, taking sin-free meat as nutriment in the place of medicine must have been preferred to taking medicine which inevitably involves himsa of plant and mineral lives. Fasting is, no doubt, the best medicine. However, when fasting was judged not to be immediately helpful in curing certain types of illness, Jaina ascetics in the canonical age must have also prescribed similar kind of sin-free meat in the wake of MV's story told in the Bhagavati XV above. For the rule of absolute vegetarianism must have been imposed upon the Jaina communities, both ascetic and lay, in the post-canonical age, as we have discussed on this problem in Ch. I, Sec. II.