Book Title: Early Jainism
Author(s): K K Dixit
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Page 54
________________ Four Old Chedasütras course, Vyavahara is rather different. For these texts indiscriminately lay down a series of injunctions and prohibitions while in a relatively few cases also mentioning as to what punishment is to be awarded to one who fails to observe the concerned injunction or prohibition. At the same time a certain difference is to be observed between the material collected in Kalpa and that collected in Vyavahara. Thus Kalpa mostly takes up problems that a monk faces in connection with his dealing with society at large that is to say, problems arising in connection with his moving about, his begging for alms, and the like; on the other hand, Vyavahara uostly takes up probl. ems that a monk faces in connection with his dealing with his fellow monks that is to say, problems arising in connection with settling the question of status within the church hierarchy, those arising in connection with the award of punishment to an erring monk, and the like. Of there are obvious material cases of overlapping where characteristic of Kalpa has found place in Vyavahara or vice versa; but the very fact that a broad subjectwise differentiation of the material contained in these two texts is possible is something noteworthy. In this connection Schubring has applied a formal criterion to distinguish the material characteristic of Kalpa from that characteristic of Vyavahāra. Thus in his introduction to his edition of Vyavahara und Niśitha (published in 1918, pp. 5-6) he noted that the passages charactertstic of Kalpa begins with words where the Jaina monk is referred to as 'nirgrantha' while those characteristic of Vyavahara begins with words where he is referred to as 'bhiksu'; the former passages he called 'nirgrantha-sūtras', the latter 'bhiksu-sutras' and it was his contention that the original Kalpa exclusively consisted of the former, the original Vyavahara exclusively consisted of the latter. [Schubring also speaks of certain other classes of passages e. g. those which he calls 'śramana nirgrantha-sūtras' but let us ignore them for the present.] Then in his introduction to his work on Daśā, Vyavahāra and Niśitha (published in 1966, pp. 2-3) he has further argued that there was an original mass of nirgrantha-sutras composed at a certain place-andhave been time out of which the presently available nigrantha-sutras selected and, similarly, there was an original mass of bhiksu-sutras composed at a certain place-and-time out of which the presently available bhiksusutras have been selected. All this is apparently marked by much brilliant insight, but perhaps it might be possible to somewhat simplify and somewhat modify the great scholar's thesis. It should certainly be nobody's position that some one author wrote out either Kalpa or Vyavahāra; the two texts are too much unsystematic for that and the conclusion is legitimate that they are of the form of a compilation of certain pre-existing passages composed by different authors at different places and different times. But the impression need not be created that while making compila Jain Education International 45 For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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