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Five Anga-texts - story-collection
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might have been facil tated by explicitly drawing a particular moral even in the case of stories with an independent religious significance) and so the need was felt to compose 206 stereotyped stories supposed to belong to the Dharmakatha type; thus it could come about that those 19 original stories were called Jħatadharmakatha I, those 206 new stories Iñātad harmakathā II (made up of 10 Vargas respectively covering 5, 5, 54, 54, 32, 32, 4, 4, 8, 8, Adhyayanas).
Many of the points made use of in the above argumentation were first raised by Schubring in bis introduction to 'Worte Mahāvīras (Published in 1926, pp. 5-8). Thus be noticed that so many stories of the Daša texts are no independent stories, that there are discrepancies between the chaptertitles of Daša texts given in Sthānanga and the chapter-titles of the same as presently available, that in this connection the Sthananga list is more reliable, and so on and so forth. But he tended to think that all the cases of stereotyped stories were the cases of replacing some old material by a new one. To us that appears to be the case only with Antakyddaśa and Anuttaraupapālikadaśa, for there is little ground to suppose there once existed texts which stood in the place of our 5 U pānga-texts, our Jñata. dharmakatha II, or Vi pakaśruta II.
So much consideration given to the questions of history and text-composition let us next have a close look at the contents of the Anga-texts of the form of a story-collection. These Jaina texts have been composed primarily with a view to edifying the laity- just as are the Epics and Purānas of the Brahmins and the Jūtakas and Avadānas of the Buddhists. Not that these texts are exclusively concerned with the problems arising in connection with the life of a layman, but that is not the point. For compositions coming from a monastic religious sect like Jainism are bound to lay all out emphasis on the problems arising in connection with the life of a monk and our texts are no exception to the rule. What is noteworthy about them is their form rather than their content. The very fact that these texts are story-texts tends to suggest that they are primarily meant for a readership - rather listenership - not versed in the niceties of theory. Of course, a newly converted monk too could read these texts with profit but his studies being oriented towards grasping the essentials of theory he would not linger long with elementary texts such as these; but it was through these very elementary texts that a layman was to be instructed in whatever theoretical matters he was. It is perhaps symptomatic that the study curt. iculum of a Jaina monk laid down in Vyavahāra (10.20-33), even while mentioning the remaining Anga-texts and so many other texts DOW not available to us, is absolutely silent about these story-texts. Be that as it
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