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"NĀTAPUTTA' IN EARLY NIRGRANTHA LITERATURE
M. A. Dhaky
The Pāli canon of the Buddhists refers to Jina Vardhamāna Mahāvira as *Niggantha Nataputta' (Ceylonese version) or 'Niggantha Nāțaputta' (Burman version). The appelation 'Nātaputta' is after Vardhamāna's clan-nomen Nāta', Jñāt;; the prefixed term 'Niggantha' (Nirgrantha) alludes to the Sramanic Church of which he was the leader. No scholar, however, seems to have investigated in depth as to the situation as it obtains in regard to this specific (clanic) appelation inside the literature of the Nirgranthas. The present paper addresses itself to exploring this particular aspect of inquiry.
The earlier texts of the Ardhamāgadhi canon do contain clear as well as copious references to 'Nātaputta' (Iñātņputra, scion of the Jñāts clan). The broad temporal bracket of the relevant passages (or verses as the case may be) inside the different texts is c. B. C. 250-A. D. 250. While this epithet virtually disappears after that period, the reminiscences of it echo in the post-Gupta, pre-medieval and medieval commentaries, laxicons, and sometimes also in the hymns, the phase with which the present paper shall not deal.
Unlike the Buddhist references which allude to Mahāvira singularly by his clan epithet, the early Nirgrantha canonical texts employ it alongside a large variety of other honorifics and epithets. Moreover, the Nirgranthas had not needed to prefix the qualificatory Niggantha' to his clan epithet 'Nātaputta' since for them he was not an outsider but the leader of their own Order, Nirgrantha Church. For them it, therefore, went without specifically so saying.
The earliest pertinent references to Nātaputta figure inside the two relatively later chapters of the Ācārānga (Book I) which of course do not seem later than the third and the second century B. C. The eighth chapter's eighth lecture (uddeśa) therein refers to 'Nātaputta' in a verse :
अयं से अवरे धम्मे नातपुत्तेन साहिते। आयवज्जं पडियारं विजहेज्जा तिधा तिधा ।
—31ETTİT, TA FPIFFET, C.C.219
Next the "Uvadhāna-sutta" ("Upadhāna-sūtra", c. 3rd-2nd cent. B. C.), which forms 'Chapter 9' (Book I) of the selfsame work, twice refers to this epithet (once as 'Nātasuta') in one and the same verse :
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