Agam 39 Chhed 06 Mahanishith Sutra

Author(s): Punyavijay, Rupendrakumar Pagariya, Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Granth Parishad

Page 79

72
MAHĀNISIHA STUDIES AND EDITION IN GERMANY
paviyam reads, in Deleu's translation: "yet by some [beings this state] has been attained to from [all] eternity;" either the brackets could be omitted, or one might simply translate: "yet, others have it right from the beginning." Moreover, it is cifficult to be consistent in using brackets; e.g., in the translation of II 1: "somebody who has totally extracted [his] salyas with all his heart," there is no reason to put the first "his" in brackets and not the second (nimmül'uddhiya-salleṇam savva-bhāvena).
In II 5d, ta dukkham tattha vi bhave is translated as follows: "Yet even there. [they] would be [in] grief." Apart from the fact that here too, the brackets are misleading - it was not until we made a special effort to visualize the sentence without the words in brackets that we understood why they were there, the translation fails to do justice to ta. According to the translation, pada d expresses people's disappointment in not finding the happiness they were expecting (hohi sokkham kil' amhanam). In our opinion päda d indicates a reason, introduced by ta "therefore;" beings with defective senses are never happy with the situation they are in, and they think that they would be happy in the opposite situation: when it is warm, they are unhappy and they imagine that they would be happy if it was cool, but once there they again long for the original situation; "therefore even there they would be unhappy."
The introduction to his contribution to the volume is an opportunity for Professor Schubring to look back upon the Mahanisiha as a whole; and there is ample reason for him to do so; after having first analyzed the text in 1918, after having published chapters. 6-8 in collaboration with F.R.Hamm in 1951, and after having supervised Deleu's work on chapters 1-3 in the late fifties and early sixties, "war es mir ein Gebot der Ordnung, mich wiederum zu beteiligen und die restlichen Kapitel 4 und 5 zu übernehmen" (p.171). Schubring follows the pattern adopted by Deleu: edition of the text (p.175-205), variant readings (p.206-208), translation (p.209-235); those who are interested in reading the translation only will appreciate that "Die deutsche Wiedergabe stellt sich unserem jain'aupanisadika sastra, wo es sich in allbekannter Weitschweifigkeit ergeht, in Freiheit gegenüber"), and glossary (p.236-240).
Jain scholarship and Indic scholarship generally are grateful to Hamm, Deleu, and above all, Schubring, for having made available to them such a vast amount of scholarly materials on the Mahanisiha. The fact that these materials are scattered over three volumes is to paraphrase Schubring - "eine Unbequemlichkeit, die der Benutzer gerne entschuldigen will." University of Pennsylvania
LUDO ROCHER