________________
CHAPTER I
SOME NOTEWORTHY FEATURES OF THE JAINA SPECULATION AS OCCURRING IN ACĀRĀNGA I AND SUTRAKRTĀNGA I
Introduction
The Jaina canonical texts Ācārāngasūtra and Satrakrtāngasutra are each divided into two śrutaskandhas (= chief sections). In each case the first śrutaskandha gives the appearance of being considerably old. But the question is whether anything quite definite can be said about the antiquity of these two śrutaskandhas, and it is this question that has to be considered first of all. (For the sake of convenience we call the first śrutaskındha of Ācārānga 'Ācārānga l', the first śrutaskandha of Sūtrakrtānga "Sutrakrtānga I.]
As regards Acāranga I certain important discoveries of a most funda. mental kind were made by Walther Schubring in connection with his editon of the text published in 1910. He showed that the major part of the text is made up of verses, a relatively small part made up of prose-passages; then he pointed out that the verses in question are ofen incomplete and lastly that they are interspersed with prose-lines which sometimes introduce a verse, sometimes supplement it, sometimes do something else of the sort; as for the original prose-passages of the text he argued that they are accompanied by no outside accessories such as these. Schubring also argued that the passages collected in a chapter or a subdivision thereof of. ten followed an order that was governed by strange considerations; e.g. sometimes a passage followed another simply because it began with the same word with which the latter ended, sometimes this happened even when the words concerned were not the same but just similar sounding. At the same time, Schubring argued that a group of passages scattered in different chapters often exhibited a connectedness of theme. All this was nothing short of revelation to the students of Acārānga I but maybe all was not equally convincing. However, the fact that the text was so much full of verse-composition admitted of no doubt and was a first-rate discovery; for the tradition of regarding this verse-composition as verse-compostion was lost long long ago-so that no medieval commentator of the text ever suspected that what he was commenting on was overwhelmingly a versecomposition. The discovery was doubly important, for not only could Schubring here point out so many verses but it was further found out that the metre of these verses was invariably either Trişçubh (including Ja Anustubh (the last chapter being in old āryā). Now Tristubh and Anustubh
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
