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Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 111. pure self, this inevitably comes to undermine a theory of bondage based upon material karma. In other words, when ignorance (ajñāna / avidyā) of the true nature of the self becomes the overriding factor in bondage, material karman itself starts to lose reality.
ii) Upayoga according to the Pravacanasāra Although what I shall call Kundakunda's 'upayoga doctrine' is used repeatedly in the Pravacanasāra to explain the mechanics of bondage and liberation, there is no one group of gāthās in which it is systematically explained or justified in philosophical or doctrinal terms. On the contrary, it is presented as though it were a commonly accepted doctrine in need of little direct explanation. In this it demonstrates its compatibility with the nature of the text in which it occurs, since the latter has more the appearance of a mosaic of 'traditional', or earlier material, arranged on a roughly thematic basis, rather than something composed as a unity. However, as far as I know, the upayoga doctrine does not appear in this form in any recorded source prior to Kundakunda. Indeed, commentators frequently remark upon the peculiarity, or uniqueness of Kundakunda in this respect. 67 For all hermeneutic purposes, therefore, he must be taken as the originator of this particular form of the upayoga doctrine.
The purpose of this compilation, at least in Books 1 and 2, is to instruct advanced mendicants (śramaņas) in the discipline which leads to self-knowledge and final liberation. Book 3, insofar as it is directed at all, seems to have a different audience in mind, namely, those just setting out on the śramaņas' path and advanced lay people. As I shall show, taken in the context of the upayoga doctrine of the first two books, there is, in terms of soteriology, something concessionary, and even
67 See, for instance, Tatia, p. 74.
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