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36
Early Jainism
of gifts to the moaks a householder was not there considered worthy of commendation).
III
Most important conclusion can be drawn from the fact that Sūtrakṛtanga II frequently employs such technical concepts as are known to the latter-day Jaina authors. Of course, the text is a miscellaneous collection of seven discussions, of which each is itself more or less miscellaneous; moreover, each of these discussions betrays in a smaller or greater measure features that are characteristic of the earliest Jaina texts Acaranga I, Sutrakṛtânga I etc. This, however, only means that Sutrakṛtänga II is a relatively late text but not a very late text, and it should be advisable to make a special study of its different chapters from this standpoint:
Chapter I
Chapter I begins with an allegory and develops by way of elucidating its purport which consists in refuting four heretical doctrines and presenting forth the Jaina position in contrast to them all. These four doctrines respectively uphold
(i) that soul is identical with body,
(ii) that the five physical elements earth, water, fire etc. are alone real, (iii) that the whole universe is somehow a transformation of man (-the Supreme Man --i.e. God)
(iv) that everything in this world is predetermined fatally.
The tradition of refuting these four doctrines was somewhat old, for they are some among the rival doctrines refuted in Sutrakṛtānga I (1.1). However, neither there nor here are ontological considerations offered against any of these doctrines - not even against the first three which are obviously ontological in their essence; for in both places what has been urged against each and every one of these is that on accepting it an ethically upright life becomes an impossibility. Again, the Jaina position as presented in the two texts in question (in Sutrakṛtānga I before the rival doctrines have been considered, în Sutrakṛtānga II after that) is exclusively concerned with ethical matters. Even so, it has to be noted that the presentation of the rival doctrines as well as that of the Jaina position are considered more lucid and elaborate in Sūtrakṛtānga II than in Sūtrakṛtānga I. As for the tradition of considering the rival doctrines it was not carried forward in the later canonical texts and so no technical concepts grew up in connection with it, and the two technical concepts that incidentally occur in this part of Sūtrakṛtānga II have both something anomalous about them.
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