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Uttaradhyayana aud Daśayaikalika
31
problems of alms-gathering (it is pretty lengthy and made up of two subsections, one containing 100 verses the other 50), but the question is whether these things are so much more important than those were to appear in the classical list as is suggested by the relative length of space devoted to the two, One possible explanation of the anomaly is that these items were treated as extremely well understood and so no need was felt to dilate on them. In any case, to our understanding of these items Daśavaikālika contributes as little as do those old texts Ācārānga I and Sütakrtānga I, (such contribution is made by a classical text like Pindaniryukti where the problem of alsms-gathering is discussed within the frame. work of a standard list of 'defect-of-alms', but it is doubtful whether a text like this was in a position to correctly convey the significance that was originally attached to such an item of this list as was of long standing currency).
The above consideration of the Dasayaikālika discussion of the prohibited types of alms-gathering should help us in forming an idea of the precise historical value of this text. The text was chiefly intended to supply a catalogue of prohibitions and injunctions pertajoing to the so many situations which a monk had to face in the course of his eyerday life. The tradition of framing such catalogues was somewhat old. For in Sutrakstānga I we have in 9. 12-24 a catalogue dealing with general matters, in 9.25-27 one dealing with the particular problem of a proper employment of speech; and it is the former that is somewhat expanded in Daśavajkalika chapter III while it is the latter that is much expanded in Daśavaikalika chapter VII. Dasavaikalika chapter IX (with four sub-sections) takes up the particular problem of a disciple's proper dealing with his preceptor, a prob. lem that was in a way mooted in Sūtrakṛtānga I chapter 14 and had grown in importance as time passed by. And we have already taken note of Daśavaikālika chapter V (with two sub-sections) which discusses the particular problem of alms-gathering. So it is these four chapters -viz. III. V. VII. IX- that constitute the kernel of Dašavaikälika-inasmuch as it is they that bring out what is truly specific to this text. It is in virtue of tbese chapters that Dasavatkālika acts as a prototype for the later monastic disciplinary texts. As for its remaining chapters, they speak of things more or less interesting and more or less important, but they do not add much to the essential worth of the text. Thus chapter IY considers the general ethical problem of sixfold non-violence and the equally general ethical problem of six great vows, while chapter VI considers in addition to these two problems those six miscellaneous items we have already noted in another conne. ction: in all this it is only the six miscellaneous items considered in chapter VI that are an intrinsic part of the specific subject-matter of our text. As
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