Gandhari Prakrit Version of Rhinoceros Sutra

Author(s): J C Wright
Publisher: ZZ_Anusandhan

Page 11

of osadaya- with ośīna in Ga. would seem to be a sign of the collision of sat-'cut off' with suppletive sad- / $i- 'fall that is registered in Pāṇini.
A total of 40 verses seems to have been a common aim of the compilers. Salomon has shown (p.197f.), as best possible in the fragmentary state of the manuscript, that the Gandhari text indeed had 40. It could justify this with a 40unit Uddāna which, on the evidence of *ohāraña as catchword for Ga. 19, reflects an older stratum than the text to which is appended. The Pali Apadăna, deemed to be a later compilation, has 42 by conflating the Gandhari reading of an initial title-verse with that of Sn.? That Sn has 41 could be precisely due to its duplication of the samchanna verse, upsetting the neat total that has otherwise been achieved by including four verses that are not found in the Gandhari.
The Gandhari, on the other hand, reaches 40 owing to its duplications of Pa. 22 (Ga. 33 and 38) and 26 (Ga. 6 and 18), both of which seem rather clearly to be induced by accidents of graphic corruption, and by virtue of a more creative triplication of the title-verse (Ga. 1, 14 and 23). As Pa. 1, the verse combines a non-violence' hemistich with a celibacy hemistich, so that there is an effective antithesis between kindness to all (sabbesu bhūlesu) and attachment to none (kuto suhayam). In Ga. 1, the non-violence is repetitiously combined with benevolence (* metreņa citteņa hitānukampi) In Ga.14 and 23, religious instruction is enjoined along with the isolation, but that is neither logical nor really in the spirit of the text. Since 23c seems to have had * na icheya putram like Skt. 11, possibly 14c has rather *ñātim na icheya in 14c like Skt. 12. Salomon however, is unwilling (p. 41) to draw any such conclusions about duplication from the evidence, or 7. Salomon (p. 116.) calls it 'title line', since the Gandhari copyist wrote it separately, as his reaction to the lack of an individual title,