Doctrine of Jainas

Author(s): Walther Shubring, Wolfgang Beurlen
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 90

DOCTRINE OF THE JAINAS
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discourses of their early predecessors not to be important any longer It is more likely that their preservation appeared to be undesirable since the study of such disputes was apt to arouse heretical thoughts and activities Some quotations from the Puvvas indeed have been preserved in the reports on the early schisms ($ 17) exclusively.
We have seen that our interpretation of the word pædvagaya 13, partly, based upon what both Samav and Nandi say with regard to the contents of Anga 12. Though there can be no doubt that these are merely rhetorical, we must suppose that the names of the sections have been preserved just as faithfully as those of Anga 11 The minute descriptions of the subsections, on the other hand, seem to be fictitious, and all attempts of an interpretation are useless, since he who wrote down the alleged contents had the Ditthuvāya no longer before him.? No less fantastic, therefore, is the extent in vatthu or “subjects” attributed to the Puyva (to be seen also in Samay 25a; 26b, 35b, 44b and in Thān ), to say nothing of their number of words. Their alleged size corresponds with their gradual loss, as referred to by the Svetāmbaras and registered in the posthumous spiritual titles of cauddasa-(coddasa-), dasa-and even nava-puuvi The last to know all 14 of them was Sthūlabhadra (§ 23). For it was he whom they were told by Bhadrabāhu upon the request of the Council of Pātalıputra, but he was forbidden to teach others more than ten (Par. 9, 110). After the seventh patriarch following Sthūlabhadra even these were lost. And that is why Mahāgıri and his successors up to Vajra are called daśapūrvin. So far the Svetāmbaras; the Digambaras have eleven daśapūrvadhārin with other names. The last of them, Dharmasena, is reported to have died in 315 A M2
$39 The gradual loss of the Puvvas, which must have happened according as an apology in general or in the shape
1 The AUTHOR, Worte p 5-LEUMANN (VI OC III, 2, p 258) thought to see a close relation of a small Saiva text with the Digthivaya, Parıkamma I Possibly the so-called contents of the Ditthiy have been composed after the model of that kind of texts, since the real facts were no longer known, not vice versa, as LEUMANN believed
2 Sakalakirti, comp BHANDARKAR loc cit S 125.