Agam 05 Ang 05 Study Of Bhagvati Vyakhya Prajnapti Sutra

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

Page 54

Canonical Council. A conspicuous feature of the Jaina Angas is that five Angas out of twelve consist of story texts which are aimed at educating the laity at large. These story texts as a whole belong to the later age. Historically speaking, laymen's participation in religious activities does not appear in a prominent form before the time of Mathura inscriptions and archaeological remains (i.e., the third stage), and concern shown for laymen in the existent canon at the time of Bhadrabahu I is as yet minimal in comparison with that shown to them in the literature belonging to the 4-5th centuries A.D. And it is during this Gupta age that the Jainas had to face the severest test in their history- a mass exodus of the Jaina communities from Mathura, due to the religio-socio-economic pressures imposed upon them by the Hindu revival movement, which must have been led by the Vaisnavas in particular. The lay business communities migrated to the then commercial and trade centres in the South and West, followed by the ascetic sangas. The realistic and economic capacities stored up by the then lay Jainas seem to have smoothed the exodus of the Jaina communities from Mathura. This historical incident of the mass migration of the Jaina communities to the South and West, and the fatally long famine that caused the Third Canonical Convention at Valabhi split the Jaina church into two, i.e., the present day Digambara and Svetambara. The Digambaras immediately accepted the 12 Argas as the basic class of their canon as well, while rejecting the list of other canonical texts authorized by the Third Valabhi Council."
100
In view of all this, it must have been the Second Canonical Council that was responsible for authorizing the 12 Angas as the basic class of the sacred texts of the Jainas including five story texts, for the then church authorities must have been fully obliged to the dedicated activities of the lay Jainas performed during this critical period. The selection of the Angas was thus ncessarily made not according to the criteria of the chronological value or doctrinal value of the then existing texts.
101
This fact can be also deduced from the implication hidden behind the choice of the number of Angas. It is likely that the number of the Angas as twelve instead of five or ten was determined as an analogy of the twelve limbs of the world-man (i.e., his two feet, two parts of bottom, two thighs, back-belly, two hands and neck-head') in meditation. By authorizing the 12 Angas as the basic sacred texts of the Jainas, both ascetic and lay, the Second Canonical Council probably wished to attach to both Angas (i.e., the fundamental code or the limbs of Jaina dharma) and Jaina communities (i.e., the bearers of Angas or the limbs of Jaina church) a symbolic sense of eternal continuity by using the metaphor of the World-man's limbs. The implication as such can be easily appreciated when we reflect upon the most unhappy historical circumstances that beset the Jainas at that time.