Distribution Of Absolutive In Una In Ittarajjhaya

Author(s): Herman Tieken
Publisher: Herman Tieken

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ABSOLUTIVE IN -ŪŅA(M)
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chapters the scenario clearly overestimates the importance of the so-called bare version of the Jātakas, in the case of the dogmatic and disciplinary chapters its complications have so far not been followed up properly.
The lack of evidence for the one scenario is of course no proof for the other. Nevertheless, we should seriously consider the possibility that the Uttarajjhāyā is in fact a late compilation, that is, that it would, generally speaking, be as late as the latest material found in it.
In this connection it should be noted that in combining old and late material Uttarajjhāyā does not stand on its own. As I have shown elsewhere, Āyāra and Sūyagada by their use of tuy(v)atta- as a common word for “Iying down" seem to linked more or less directly to the commentatorial literature on the Buddhist Vinaya (TIEKEN 1997a). This relatively late word is found side by side with (metrical) material which JACOBI dates between the fourth and the third centuries B.C. (JACOBI 1884: CLI ff.).
Furthermore, the occurrence of tuppa, a late, western word, in some of the narrative canonical texts would place the origin of these text as we now have them in Gujarat and not in early Magadha as one might conclude on the basis of other, archaic, features (TIEKEN 1997b).
All these indications, however rare, seem to corroborate the traditional legend which dates the compilation of the canon in our era and in Gujarat. As I see it, the real challenge put to us is to explain how old and authentically eastern material has found its way into the Jaina texts which are relatively recent compilations made in the western parts of India.
These considerations apart, another question is how and when the absolutives ending in -ūna(m) have found their way into Uttarajjhāyā. If the narrative texts of the Jaina canon, in which the absolutive ending in ūna(m) is completely absent, are indeed late texts as well, this only underlines the exceptional position of Uttarajjhāyā on this point. Furthermore, if the absence of this absolutive in the narrative texts is the result of a conscious process of archaization, which has led to the selection of the archaic -että type, this would suggest that Uttarajjhāyā was compiled, or added to, by redactors working within a different, or later, literary tradition. The insertions involving āryā verses would indeed suggest that in the case of the absolutives, too, we have to do with interferences from a literary, or rather textual, tradition rather than from, for instance, the contemporary spoken languages. In this connection I may refer again to the fact that the absolutive ending in -ūna(m) is otherwise typical of the nijjuttis. The same is the case with the āryā metre. In this connection it should also be noted that in the traditional classification of the canon