Arya Bhadrabahu

Author(s): M A Dhaky
Publisher: Z_Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_1_002105.pdf and Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_2

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M. A. Dhaky
Jambū-jyoti
recluses59. (The Vyayahāra also mentions pāņipratigrahadhāri [bowl-less mendicants) and Pratigrahadhāri (in essence monks using a begging-bowl]). These terms, on the other hand and, significantly, are absent in theagamas of the pre-Christian Era. What is more, there is here noticeable a scholastic approach and classificatory tendencies about the kaipa-sthitis which do not seem compatible to, or correspond with the much simpler and straightforward (but very stern) ideals held, and the precise rules laid down for the acela or
e friars and, by contradistinction, for the sacela friars (in that early age having minimal allowable possession for them) in the undoubted oldest strata of the earlier agamas such as the Ācārānga Book I. Even the style and phraseology of these specific kalpa-sthiti passages in the Kalpa widely differ from those of the rest of the text. These passages apparently had been introduced at some point in time from somewhat later and different, yet relatively ancient, source. These formidable facts raise the first solid suspicion on the supposedly high antiquity of the Kalpa and the Vyavahāra and their authorship ascribed to Bhadrabāhu.
2) Both of these works reflect a highly developed state of organization of the Nirgrantha clergy, as also a well-established as well as much proliferated monastic church. On the testimony of the third phase of the Sthavirāvali (c. A. D.100) of the Paryusaņā-kalpa, the first ganas or organized bands of friars and mendicants (nigganthas, bhikkhus) and nuns (nigganthis, bhikkūnīs) progressively began to be instituted some 50 years or so posterior to Bhadrabāhu* and had diversified further, indeed considerably so into śākhās and kulas by, and even before, the first two centuries of the Christian Era. The ganas, in the next stage, also were further divided into sambhoga-groups. The Vyavahāra refers to this latter term which, however, nowhere appears in the earlier canonical literature including even the Ācārānga Book II (c. Ist cent. B.C.-A. D.): It does figure though in
*
Alate Sātavāhana inscription in one of the Junnar caves in Maharashtra refers to "Siddh-gane Aparājite." [Cf. S. Nagraju, Buddhist Architecture of Western India, (C. 250 B.C.-A.D. 300), Delhi 1981, “Appendix : List of Brahmi Inscriptions from the Rock-cut monuments of Western India," p. 331, Ins. no. 10.) If the Aparājita noted here is the grand preceptor of Bhadrabāhu, then the convention for the gana formation may have started a few decades earlier. The whole problem needs further investigation. (Thisgana has not been noticed even from an early literary source. It is noted late in the Southern work, the Śrutāvatāra (c. 10th cent.].)