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Ancient Jaina Hymns
377
poet. The line would then perhaps read as follows: “aiṁ klim śrīm blir tathā hsoṁ” etc.
It is also possible that the well-known 'slim' ('amsta') is a more correct reading than the rather doubtful 'blim'. Yet when constituting the text, I thought it advisable not to trust conjecture, so long as the latter is avoidable.
I have not succeeded in tracing this particular mantra anywhere else, though similar mantras are frequent, so far as thus much can be stated without proper ‘uddhāra'.127
That a precise 'uddhāra' is not possible in the case of both the mantras on the basis of the data as the poet puts them before the reader, is only natural, for to him, like to the equally spiritualminded among his predecessors on the field of 'mantra-garbhita' poetry, the mantra, divested of its original implication of sorcery, is nothing but another means of self-realization, so that its precise wording is of minor importance. It is passion ( ‘kaņāya' ), the 'bhāva-ripu', i.e., the esential enemy of the ātman, which the poet visualizes ( and the Jaina reader correctly conceives ) as the object of the barbarous-sounding 'hana' and 'daha', and it is 'Final Beatitude' or 'mokşa', which hides behind the mystic-allegorical veil of the secular-luxurious-sounding 'Sāmrājya-Lakşmī' in st. 11.
In the case of the 'kavaca'-like 'nyasa' of the Jina's image on various parts of the body, as recommended in st. 12, the imagined spiritual aim, viz., 'siddhi”, final emancipation, after only 2-3 more rebirths in high forms of existence, is clearly expressed.
The hymn consists of 21 stanzas in the Sārdūla-vikrīdita metre, which occasionally, sometimes in the middle of a stanza, changes over to Sragdharā ( 8a, 8b; 106, 10d, 116-12d and 20d), and once ( st. 10c ) to Citralekhā, unless the latter is to be changed to Sragdhară, as discussed above.
The hymn is handed down in manuscript No. 5084 of the Scindia Oriental Institute, on two leaves of very old country paper. The first page is blank, the second contains, on its right side, a blank
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