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82
BRHAT-KATHAKOŚA
author himself, are found here and there. Among the quotations there are Anustubhs as well as Prākrit gathās. Almost all the quotations are anony. mous; they are not necessarily introduced by the phrase tathū coktam etc.; and there are reasons to believe that some verses, which form a part of the running text, might turn out to be quotations. In the extent of individual Kathānakas there is a good deal of disparity: the shortest (No. 125) contains 4 verses and the longest (No. 57 ) 585 verses.
ii) Various Strata of the contents etc.
All these stories have their seeds in the Bhagavati Ārādhanā which is primarily a religious scripture meant mainly for the study of Sramaņas; and consequently their back-ground and outlook are predominantly religious and ascetical. As it is usual with Jaina tales, many of the stories deal with the biographies not only of individuals but also of their souls migrating through various births. This naturally leads to the emboxing of sub-tales into tales, and the structure of the tale assumes some complexity, For the author, however, this mode of composition has a two-fold advantage: first, it gives him a sovereign method of illustrating the reward of virtues and punishment of vices in a subsequent birth, if not in this, and thus strengthens the faith of pious believers in the potentiality of moral values and the inviolability of the omnipotent law of Karman which automatically works and necessarily accompanies the doctrine of transmigration so far as Jainism is concerned; and secondly, it affords an opportunity for the author to present the same character in its various facets and under varying conditions through the infinite vista of the soul's journey. Chances, accidents, mishaps and traits of individual character, which usually control and guide the threads of the story, are all traced back to some Karman or the other in one of the past lives. At times a pair of souls is selected and their fate, in relation to each other, is elaborated through the tedious journey of Saṁsāra (No. 109). Some of the lengthy stories (Nos. 56-7, 73 etc.) do show these traits; and they assume an awful dignity which evokes sympathy for the characters that are suffering for their sins which the reader would like to avoid, of course sub-consciously, in his daily conduct, and thus escape the sad lot which faces the sinner elsewhere. Almost as a corollory from this we find here an enormous bulk of stories in which various religious virtues are illustrated: some specifically pertain 'to the ascetic life and some to that of a house-holder. Their number is pretty big in this book; and they comprise Jaina tenets connected with Samyaktva (Nos. 4-12, 52-5, 63-71, III), Alocană and Pratyakhyāna (Nos. 14-16), the nature of Samsāra and the rarity of human birth etc.
1. See my remarks on some of these quotations in the Notes at the end. 2 Bloomfield has already noted that such illustrations are found in plenty in the
narrativo literaturc of the Jainas in particular and of India in general, soe Life and Stories of the Jaina Saviour Pārsvanātha, Baltimore 1919, Intro. pp. 13-6,
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