Canonical Niksepa

Author(s): Bansidhar Bhatt
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan

Page 77

52
THE CANONICAL NIKSEPA
157. - Sthāna has employed niksepas with and (more particularly) without execution in order to obtain sets of three (Nos. 1-3), four (Nos. 4-8), five (Nos. 9-14), and ten subdivisions (Nos. 15-16). Nos. 9-13 are the cnly Sthāna nikṣepas with execution (doublets of the Entries 995-9). The niksepas Nos. 1-8 and 14-16 are post-canonical and were borrowed from Āvaśyaka Niryukti etc. They are "canonical" only by virtue of their inclusion into Sthāna.
(e) NIRĀMUKHA
The Sâmukha pattern was defined by the presence of the "programme". The problem of distinguishing the Samukha pattern from the post-canonical forms of the niksepa did not arise (the difference being considerable), and the distinction from the earlier and less elaborate forms was automatically drawn by the programme which served as a solemn introduction to Mahāvīra's answer and transformed a simple dialogue (or rather a piece of dialogue) into a self-contained composition. In the case of the Nirāmukha niksepa, definition is again definition against related but simpler forms. As the Nirāmukha niksepa is not very complex and not very uniform, we can distinguish it from related matter only on account of the determinants. Two or more terms from the standard set "davva, khetta, kāla, bhāva" are sufficient to characterize a unit (question-cum-answer) as a Nirāmukha niksepa. Theoretically, two or three of these terms could occur in questions-cum-answers in any function. However, experience shows, that two or more of these terms occurring in the same sentence normally operate as determinants, and this is the lower limit of the Niramukha nikşepa.
The lower degree of complexity vis-à-vis Sâmukha is linked with a higher degree of flexibility. In the case of the Samukha niksepas, the substitution of unexpected determinants was rare (52 is an example of a davva-loga structure with determinants not belonging to the standard set). Such cases are, however, common on the Nirāmukha "level", and they will be discussed in the Section on "Parallels".
We supply the demonstration in the present case in the form of a Sanskrit paraphrase (mainly chāyā type) of two short and simple Nirāmukha niksepas, viz. 9336 and 41. The Nirāmukha nikṣepas (and related structures) often take the shape of terminological puzzles where the various combinations of terms become meaningless if an attempt is made to replace the Prakrit terns, one by one, by English terms.
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"JĪVAN ... GARBHAM AVAKRĀMAN kim sa-indriyo 'vakrāmati (athava] an-indriyo 'vakrāmati?" "he Gautama, syāt sa-indriyo 'vakrāmati, syād an-indriyo 'vakrāmati." "kenarthena ... syāt sa-indriyo 'vakrāmati, syād an-indriyo 'vakrāmatity ucyate?"