Chaupannamahapurischariyam

Author(s): Shilankacharya, Amrutlal Bhojak, Dalsukh Malvania, Vasudev S Agarwal
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 38

20] INTRODUCTION
( 23 introduction of the vairāgya-stories is always the same : The brothers ( in the first story the sons of Sagara, in the other two stories Vāsudeva and Baladeva ) meet a monk on their way. They ask him why he abandoned worldly life, and the monk replies by relating his life-story. The hero of these stories and of the drama, which has of course a different beginning) always gains after much suffering and exertion some valuable object (generally a woman) which he loses later on through adverse circumstances. These circumstances are obviously later additions to the original motif (the hero dies, he forsakes the woman because she is not faithful or because he thinks that she is faithless, and so forth ). This plan is repeated six times (the second story is divided into three episodes of similar character ). In all the three stories the hero takes his experience as a lesson about the futility of the samsara and renounces the world,
$ 20. Progress of the study of the UH. As an object of modern indological research, the UH of the Jains has shared in many respects the fate of the purānas: both attracted general interest at an early date, both occupy a prominent place in the descriptions of either Hinduism or Jainism, but in spite of their undisputed importance, neither has received the samne attention as other fields of indology. No doubt some of the most important parts of the UH have been studied intensively, and the methods to be employed in the study of the UH have been outlined in precise terms. But these facts cannot remove the impression that there is even now some disproportion between the vastness of the material and the relatively small number of investigations in the subject.
(1) The final picture of the growth and structure of the UH as it will eventually emerge from our investigations can be understood as the result of a sixfold comparison :
(a) The UH and the tradition of the Hindus and Buddhists. (b) The Svetāmbara-version and the Digambara-version. (c) The canonical and the post-canonical versions of the Svetämbaras. (d) The various post-canonical versions of the Svetămbaras. .! (e) The various Digambara-versions. (1) Different versions of a story found in one and the same work on the UH.
This list may appear somewhat formal but it serves to define the gaps in our knowledge. In our opinion, (c) and (d) deserve special attention. A comparison of the post-canonical versions of the Svetāmbaras (= d) could help us to understand the "contamination" described in § 14. Here it would be necessary to devise a new method for the graphical rendering of the interrelation of the versions. Instead of the usual pedigree one would have to apply a scheme of the following type:
Episode I
Episode 11
Episode III Text 1 version a (a)
version b (b)
version c (c) Text 2 version a' (a)
version b' (b)
version c' (c) Text 3 version a'' (a'')
version b'' (b)
version c'' (c) The small letters outside the brackets represent a case where no contamination has taken place. The small letters in the brackets represent a case of contamination : in Episode I, all three texts differ from one another; in II, text 1 goes with 2 as opposed to 3; in III, text 2 goes with 3 against 1. The stories best suited for such a comparison are those which exist in a relatively large number of versions. If the contents are to be compared, the versions should neither be too different nor too similar; if the