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JINA PĀRÁVA IN JAINA CANONICAL LITERATURE
Dalsukh D. Malvaniya
After surveying the available Nirgrantha canonical literature, I am convinced that the biography of Jina Pārsva was in a continuous process of growth and consequently reflects stages of development. In the earliest canonical work like the Acāra Book I (c. 5th-3rd century B.c.) and the Sūtrakrta Book I (c. 3rd-1st century B.C.), no reference to Jina Pārśva is noticeable. Only in the Vyākhyāprajñapti (c. 2nd-3rd century A.D.) do we find a reference to him as a "respected person (arabā, arbat)" designating him also as winsome (puruşādānīya)'. Therein his view on the cosmos or universe (loka) is reported to be shared by Jina Mahāvīra.? Earlier, in the Rsibhāṣitāni (compiled c. 2nd-1st century B.C. from earlier sources), Pārsva is included among the 45 rsis. Correspondingly in the text are 45 brief chapters on these rşis's sayings and aphorisms, hailing as these holymen are from the Vedic, the Buddhist, the Ajivika and the Nirgrantha traditions. Pārsva here is included, alongside Vardhamana (Jina Mahāvīra), as an arbat. In the later notices concerning the Rşibhāṣitāni, these teachers are recognized, several of course wrongly, as Pratyeka-Buddhas for Pārsva, Mahāvīra, and Gośāla were a little later recognized as tirthankaras or Founders of Church, the last two also noted that way in the Buddhist literature. Moreover, most of them are designated as arabă or arhat, a Vedic term which originally was commonly applied to all great men and was not the sole prerogative of the Nirgranthas (or for that matter Buddhists either) as it lately had become.
In Pārsva's sayings in the Rşibhāṣitāni (Ch. 31), the theories about the cosmos (loka) and the transmigration (gati) are discussed where it is clearly mentioned that the conscious beings (sīvas) and non-living verities (ajīvas) constitute the loka. Loka is without the beginning or the end, and is subject to change or modification (pārināmi). Loka is amenable to viewing from four standpoints or aspects: substance (dravya), region (kşetra), phenomenic time (kāla) and sentience-reaction (bhāva). The conscious beings, jīvas, are abstract in form. Jivas are mentioned as sublimatory (urdhvagāmi), and matter (pudgala) as being gravity-bound (adhaḥgāmi). It is also noted that the present state of the jivas or beings depend on karma and that of the pudgalas on consequential change, pariņāma.
The Nirgrantha is mentioned as madāi or eating things that possess no life, and is a person who is without the next birth. Pārsva also refers to the eight types of
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