Critical Introduction to Panhavagara

Author(s): Amulyachandra Sen
Publisher: Amulyachandra Sen

Page 18

11
----
There is a class of texts which do not compose original vannayas those well-known lengthy descriptions of persons, places, etc -in vedha, but quote them or condense them or simply refer to them by such devices as "Java" They are certainly rather far removed from the genuine vedha-texts and are called by Schubring "false" e 'secondary' vedha-texts Unlike these "secondary' vedha-texts our text does not refer to the descriptions in other texts but gives its own descriptions in full Unlike, again, the "secondary" veḍha-texts and like the Uva, a primary vedhatext, the Panhav. quotes not another but itself when it uses the Jāva mode of reference at the end of chaps 3 and 4, twice at the end of chap 5, and at the end of chap 8
G
The above considerations will entitle us to fix the date of the Panhāv as lying midway between the vedha and the gathā epochs It will also be observed as we proceed that the author of the Panhav had a model before him which was not any of the ancient texts, but the Uva, the leading production of the vedhaepoch The comparatively later age of the extant version of the 10th Anga may be realised not only from its metrical structure but from other internal material too, not so much from its language as from its style, its phraseological borrowings from, and its parallelisms with, other texts
The text uses certain words which are not used in the older texts and bear on themselves the imprint of the spirit of an epigonic age Such for example are - mokkha-vara in section A of chap 5 (p 91b), suya-sāgara in the sense of 'the sacred scriptures' in chap 6 (p 99a), the qualification of ahimsā with the epithet bhagavati in chap 6 (p 99b and p 100a) and use of saccam as bhagavam in chap 7 (p 1142), in the same connection has also been referred to the pahuda-division of the Fourteen Puvvas Such are also the use of titthamkara instead of titthagara of the older texts in chap 6 (p 99b) and chap 9 (p 130b), the description of Mahāvīra as jina-canda in chap 6 (p 99b), the use of the unparalleled term ohi-jina1) in the same place, and, the use of the term jinavar'ında in chap 10 (p 148a)
-
1) ohi-jina is apparently formed after hevala-jina, but is logically wrong, as a man who possesses ohi is no jina