Distribution Of Absolutive In Una In Ittarajjhaya

Author(s): Herman Tieken
Publisher: Herman Tieken

Page 19

ABSOLUTIVE IN ONA(M)
these, eight are found in late passages (interpolations or composed ad hoc, § 4). Of the remaining 36 instances no less than 23 are found typically in the "frames" (§§ 2-3). In the case of the legendary chapters, which account for 17 instances (§ 2), the differences in origin of the dialogue text, on the one hand, and the narrative frames, on the other, are established by the history of the genre as well as by a linguistic feature (vayam against amhe).
Of the six instances found in frames in the other chapters (§ 3) five appear to be late. Two are found in late äryä verses (36.1/1453 and 249/ 1701), two occur in a verse which contains a late word (35.20/1451), and one in a verse which is most probably a later fabrication (26.42/1037).
It appears that a vast majority of the instances of the absolutive in -una(m) in Uttarajjhäyä have found their way into the text through frame passages composed by the redactors who compiled the individual chapters. It would also appear that many of these narrative frames are late compositions, that is, are later than the material they frame (leaving aside. those tracts which are themselves late, e. g. in chapter 26, for which see ALSDORF 1966: 169ff and BRUHN 1996: 29ff). It follows that the text as we now have it is a late compilation. So far my conclusion does not differ from the one drawn by ALSDORF. However, another question presents itself, namely whether we are indeed entitled, as ALSDORF suggests, to postulate an Ur-Uttarajjhāyā, that is one without the äryä verses and
without the frames.
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The answer to this question would, at least in the present context, depend on the explanation of the origin of those absolutives in -ūņa (m) found in the interior of the text (§ 7). Given the rare instances in Päli as well as in the other texts of the Jaina canon we may start from the assumption that these instances of -una(m) in Uttarajjhāyā are most probably later additions. This would leave us with basically two options: they are the result of interferences of the same redactors or compilors, who added the frames, or they have found their way into the text in the course of its subsequent transmission.
To begin with the latter possibility, the instances collected in § 5 show that in the course of the transmission of the text the absolutive has been liable to variation. However, the variation may have worked in both. directions. That is to say, in at least one case (22.48) we should reckon with the possibility that, contrary to expectations, the "later" absolutive in -ūna (m) was the original reading and the "earlier" type ending in -ettāṇa(m) the secondary one.