Agam 05 Ang 05 Study Of Bhagvati Vyakhya Prajnapti Sutra

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

Page 66

CHAPTER 11
TEXT CONSTRUCTION OF THE BHAGAVATISŪTRA I-XX
Table of Synopsis
126
We are going to handle the first twenty 'satakas or chapters of the Bhagavati, which are each subdivided into udde'sakas or subchapters, that then consist of sutras or passages. Since serial enumeration of these sutras is absent in the codices so far checked in the L.D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad, their numbering appearing in our printed text must have been made by the editors' hands in the modern age. Sataka XV is an independent chapter devoid of any udde'saka. Some sutras are extraordinarily lengthy and some extremely short. Not only is the physical make-up of this text extremely uneven, but also no attempt seems to have been made to organize these sutras under definite subject headings. Thus the passages dealing with totally different areas of knowledge belonging to different canonical stages are jumbled together in one udde'saka in the worst possible condition. Our task is to assign chronological dates to these sutras.
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A chronological stratification of these sutras is best facilitated if they are grouped together first according to their subject matter: this is the first task to be performed before entering into text analysis. Thus a subject-wise catalogue of the contents of sutras is going to be made in this chapter, along with other informative data which are helpful to our aim. This table of synopsis consists of eight columns which are indicated by Roman numerals (Column IT is added to Sataka V), and the dates of these sutras are to be entered in Column VI by way of assigning their corresponding canonical stages proposed in Chapter 1. The explanations required for the entries in this table are as follows:
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Column I. Our index consisting of X and A-F. X represents a sutra or a sutra group which contains direct or indirect reference/s to the other canonical text/s which belong to the fifth canonical stage. X-sutras are therefore assigned to the fifth canonical stage. They do not require any further discussion for ascertaining their age, and their date is immediately entered in this chapter. All the rest of the sutras are examined in the next chapter in order to determine their chronological stages.
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These sutras are classified into six subject fields from A to F, by which the next Chapter I is divided into six corresponding sections as shown in the Table of Contents. Our first entry 1.1.8, for instance, has two indicators, i.e., D-1b and E-2, which direct us to turn to Part 1 (b) "Calamane calie' under Section D "Ethical Problems", and Part 2 "Karma - Nature and Mechanism"