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THE ESSENCE OF JAINA SCRIPTURES
‘Righteousness is faith in the Nirgrantha doctrine, a religion void of himsa, free from the eighteen faults, divine.'
But he is a preacher who lays stress upon the topic in hand : and so in the most affecting of his compositions, the Bhava-prabhrta, treating of bhava, ‘realization' or 'sincerity,' we read (v. 164)...
'Why babble at length? Gain, religion, pleasure and final release, and other pursuits, all depend upon sincerity.
And in the Sila (Sheel-prabhrta, on morality (v. 19), he declares that...
Mercy to living creatures, self-restraint, truth, honesty, chastity and contentment, right faith and knowledge, and austerity are [but] the entourage of morality.'
His manner of working, therefore, is that of a teacher at home in his subject and its several parts (and how should a Jaina dogmatist not be so?), and not of mere popularizer of pre-existing compositions. He would have disclaimed, as emphatically as does Ishvarakrshna, any departure from the strictest orthodoxy of his school; but his celebrity is that of a poet (kavi), sage (muni), ecclesiastic (pat:a-dharin), not of a commentator...
The Pravachana-sara, as arranged in the commentary, is in three chapters, containing respectively 92, 108 and 75 Gatha stanzas. In the commentary the chapters (shruta-skandha) are entitled —
I. Jnana-tattva-prajnapana, 'Exposition of the truth as to Knowledge'; II. Jneya-tattva-prajnapana, 'Exposition of the truth as to the Knowable'; III. Charananusuchika-chulika, Appendix, hints on Conduct.' The second commentary, by Jayasena, supplies and discusses a number of extra stanzas [gatha) and stanzas 24-34 of Chapter II seem out of place and have the air of an interpolation.
The first chapter treats of the soul and its evolution, knowledge and its relation to objects, the perfect knowledge of the saint, bondage and release, pleasure and pain, merit and demerit. The second chapter discusses objects, existence, substance, quality and state; the syad-vada and naya doctrine (quodammodo' doctrine of ‘aspects”); matter, origination and destruction; time, space, atoms, vital powers; souls and their evolution, the self, karma and bodies, soul-activity and contemplation. The third chapter deals with conduct, including the topics of renunciation, self-restraint, discipline, the recluse, food, residence, association, psychical attention (upayoga), faith and study
