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ARHAT PĀRSVA WITH DHARANENDRA IN
HYMNIC LITERATURE
M. A. Dhaky
The earliest known Nirgrantha psalms and hymns figure in the books of the first two phases of the sacred śruta literature in Ardhamāgadhi and of the northern tradition. Among these the theme of the Mahāvīra-stava (c. 2nd cent. B.c.) inside the Sūtrakrtānga Book I is exclusively “Nātaputta" (jñātņputra, Jina Mahāvīra). Of slightly lesser antiquity is the Namostu-stava (the so-called Sakra-stava)? in the Dandaka form, incorporated in at least five āgamas—four of the middle phase and the fifth belonging to the latest: it possesses phrases which may possibly hark back to the early literature of the sect of Jina Pārśva. However, there is in this hymn no reference to Pārsva since it is addressed aggregationally to all "venerable Arhats as well as Tirthankaras". The composition thus belongs to a psalmic category known as the "sarva-sādbārana-Jina-stava". The third ancient hymn is the famous Caturvimśati-stava which figures among the six brief texts known as the ȘadAvaśyakas. From the later decades of the fifth century A.D., the Şad-Āvaśyakas formed the main mass of the Avaśyaka-sūtra. The stava, as its theme indicates, must have been composed only after the conception of the 24 Tirtharkaras was crystallized and this must have been before the formation of the Acela-kşapaņaka sect which separated from the main, Alpacela, northern Nirgrantha stream around A.D. 200. This stava, of course, includes Pāsa—Pārśva as the 23rd Jina in the series of 24—but has no reference to Nagendra's association with him.
The next phase of the hymnic (and a little later also litanic) formulations begins from the fifth century A.D., and thus after a hiatus of almost four centuries. The earliest known is an invocatory composition in Prakrta for the 24 Jinas which occurs amid the inaugural verses of the Nandisūtra of Deva Vācaka (c. mid 5th century); it, however, makes no allusion to Dharanendra in association with Pārsva. From the Gupta period onward, Sanskrit began to be employed alongside Prāksta and eventually dominated the field. The first writer in Sanskrit, Vācaka Umāsvāti (c. mid 4th century A.D.), did resort to metrical compositions, very largely in Aryā meter, which, however, are doctrinal, didactic, and essentially non-hymnic; and his inaugural
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