Agam 05 Ang 05 Study Of Bhagvati Vyakhya Prajnapti Sutra

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

Page 58

SECTION VI
THE FIFTH CANONICAL STAGE
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Included in the early fifth canonical stage are the Jambudvipa p., Dvipasagara p., and Pra'snavyakarana, of which the first two form the early texts of the Jaina geography, cosmography and mythology, and the last is an Angic work on ethics relevant to five vratas explained in connection with asrava-samvara. All these texts are composed in the heavily ornate style, typical of the age of story composition.
112
The purely geographical information of Jambudvipa with its minute 'datails is located in the Jambuduipa p. Chapters I, I and vi, added to which are Chapter VI offering the number, height, size, motion, etc., of the Jyotiskas, and Chapter II imparting the standard divisions of time. In relation to the Bharata region, the life stories of Rsa bha and Bharata are narrated in Chapters II - III, and Chapter V tells us how the birth of a jina is celebrated by the heavenly beings. A mythological description of the modes of life prevailing in each period of the descending-ascending time cycle occurs in Chapter I.
113
It has been reported that the account of King Bharata "can be called an exactly parallel text to Vişnu-Purana I and Bhagavata-purana V".* And the appended portions to the essentially geographic information of Jambu dvipa seem to exhibit strong elements of the Puranic influence. The characteristics of the Puranic literature are said to be fivefold: (1-2) Sarga-pratisarga (periodic creation and destruction of the world); (3) Vamsa (genealogy); (4) Manvantarani (Manu-period of time); and (5) Vamsanucarita (history of dynasties).". The concept of the creation and annihilation of the world has no place in the Jaina cosmology, and is replaced by the concept of eternal time cycle, and its susamasusama period is comparable to Manu's period of time. We will touch upon the evolution of the time cycle of the Jainas in Chapter III, Section A-2. The Kalpasutra and a part of the Nandi may represent the third Puranic aspect, related to which are the life stories of Rsa bha and Bharata in our Jambudvipa p. The fifth feature of the Puranas is not at all relevant to the Jambudvipa p. which is primarily a work of geography.
114 The Jaina geographical construction of the rest of the ring-shaped continents
which are each separated by an ocean is based on that of Jambudvipa. The cosmos of the Jainas thus impresses us with its symmetrically balanced structure. The number and dimension of mountains, rivers, regions and solar bodies, etc., in the rest of the continents increase as they proceed. And the calculation of the sizes of these continent-oceans, etc., was made using the then advanced knowledge of mathematics. The descriptions of all the rest of these continent-oceans including the minute details relevant to vedika surrounding
Jambudvipa constitute the contents of the Duipasagara p. This text also