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CHAPTER VIII
RŞIBHĀȘITA
Rşibhāsita is a miscellaneous collection of didactic verses preaching asceticism. The text is divided into 45 sections each attributed to a different person and it is called Rşibhāși a precisely because it is supposed to contain the utterances of these 45 sagely personages. However, the persons in question are mostly unknown to us from other sources, Jaina or other. wise, though the presence here of a name like Yājñavalkya which is the name of a well-known Upanişadic teacher tends to support the surmise that some-even many-of these persons are non-Jajna. In the very nature of things it is impossible to be very certain about that and an altogether different surmise remains equally plausible, viz. that some-even many-of these persons are fictitious, Be that as it may, one thing admits of no doubt. In our text the cases of employing a Jaida technical terminology are quite rare and this rarity might be explained either by supposing that the authors represented here are mostly non-Jaina or by supposing that the discussions collected here mostly belong to a fairly old period when the classical techDical terminology of the Jainas had not yet been evolved. The former explanation has the additional merit of suggesting some sort of reason why the text lost currency among the latter-day Jainas living in an atmosphere of acute religious sectarianism and finding it irksome to give publicity to the views of those considered heretic. But this loss of currency remains Understandable even on the supposition that only a few of the authors in question are non-Jaina - the rest being either Jaina or fictitious, for in an atmosphere of acute religious sectarianism even a slight admixture of heresy s deemed abhorrable. In any case, it has to be kept in mind that this text continued to be venerated as late as the time of the author of the verses wbich are now found at the beginning of Āvasyakaniryukti-rather Avaśya. kaniryukti proper--and which promise the composition of a niryukti (= com. mentary) on the canonical texts - viz. Acārānga, Sūtrakstānga, Uttarādhyayana, Daśavajkālika, Daśā, Kalpa, Vyavahāra, Rsibhāsita, Āvašyaka, Suryaprajn. apti. Most of these texts are admittedly old but that is not the point just now; the point is that the author of the verses in question mostly have come later enough and that Rsibhāsita was venerated as late as his time. In the subsequent period the text did lose currency and the reason most probably was that it was considered to be somehow tinged with heresy. But even that argues the relative antiquity of this text; for considerable interval may have divided the time when it was composed from the time
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