Gaina sutras

Author(s): Hermann Jacobi
Publisher: Clarendon Perss

Page 43

INTRODUCTION.
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Buddhism, as can be expected from any sect. We must leave to future researches to work out the details, but I hope to have removed the doubts, entertained by some scholars, about the independence of the Gaina religion and the value of its sacred books as trustworthy documents for the elucidation of its early history.
It remains for me to add a few remarks about the two works which have been translated in this book.
The Akârânga Sûtra, or, as it is sometimes called, the Sâmâyika', is the first of the eleven Angas. It treats of the âkâra, or conduct, which falls under the last of the four heads, or anuyogas, into which the sacred lore is divided, viz. Dharmakathâ, Ganita, Dravya, and Karanakarana. The Âkârânga Sutra contains two books, or Srutaskandhas, very different from each other in style and in the manner in which the subject is treated. The subdivisions of the second book being called Kûlâs, or appendices, it follows that only the first book is really old. That it was considered so even in later times, is apparent from a remark of Sîlâňka, who wrote the commentary, which is the oldest one extant? For speaking of the mangala or auspicious sentence which, according to a current theory, must occur at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of each work, Sîlâňka points out as such the first sentence of the first lesson of the first lecture, the first sentence of the fifth lesson of the fifth lecture, and the latter half of the 16th verse in the fourth lesson of the eighth lecture of the first book. It is evident that he regarded the Âkârânga Sutra as ending with the last-named passage, which is the last but one of the first book.
The first book, then, is the oldest part of the Âkârânga Sūtra ; it is probably the old Âkârânga Sûtra itself to which other treatises have been added. For it is complete in
1 See Professor Weber's remarks on the possible bearing of this name in the treatise I had so often occasion to quote, p. 243 seqq.
? It was not, however, the first commentary, for Silanka mentions one by Gandhahastin.