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

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Page 69
________________ 60 Early Jainism these injunctions and prohibitions occur, mostly in this very form and at one place, also in Nisītba (3. 70-79, 15.66-74, 16. 40-50). Sections 4 and 5 take up two allied problems - the former that of renouncing greed for pleasing sounds, the latter that of renouncing greed for pleasing forms. Section 4 catalogues a few types of sounds likely to be found pleasing (947-50), but for the most part it catalogues general spectacles likely to be accompanied by pleasing sounds (951-64) - the idea being that these spectacles are not to be attended to with a view to enjoying such sounds. Similarly, section 5 catalogues a few types of forms likely to be found pleasing, but for the rest it simply refers to the specs tacles catalogued in section 4 - the idea being that these spectacles are not to be attended to with a view to enjoying the pleasing forms accompanying them. Here agajn, amost all these injunctions and prohibitions occur, mostly in this very form and at one place, also in Nišitha (12.17-29, 17.135-38). Lastly, sections 6 and 7 again take up two allied problems -- the former laying down that a monk is not to get his body beautified or his bodily wounds tended by someone else, the latter laying down that two monks are not to get their bodies beautified or their bodily wounds tended by one another. Almost all these injunctions and prohibitions too occur, mostly in this very form and at one place, also in Niśitha (3. 16-68, 4. 49-101). Thus it is that Acārānga II in its chapters 1 and 2 undertakes a treatment of the problems of monastic discipline. But it contains two more chapters of an altogether different nature. Thus chapter 3 offers a predominently legendary biography of Mahāvīta to be followed by an exposition of the five great vows each along with its appropriate 5 bhāvanās; as for chapter 4 it offers a poem of 12 stanzas camposed in the metre Jagati and praising an ideal monk in a general fashion. The legendary Mahāvīra-biography here occurring in chapter 3 is the first of its type to occur in a canonical text (a similar version of the same was later on interpolated in Dašā chapter VIII which on this very account came to receive much widespread independent currency - under a misleading ti "Kalpasūtra'.) Similarly, the five great vows each accompanied by its appropriate 5 bhāvanas constitute a standard technical concept of classical Jainism and have found the earliest treatment in the chapter 3 of Acaranga II. (Roughly speaking, bhāvanā means a strengthening factor - so that the 5 bhāvanās of a particular vow are the five factors which lend strength to one in one's endeavour to undertake the observance of this vow.) As for chapter 4 of Acārānga II, Schubring (DC, pp. 3-4) has come out with the surmise that at some stage it got interchanged with Sutrakitanga I chapter 16; for if the present chapter 4 of Acāränga II is treated as Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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