History of Canonical Literature of Jainas

Author(s): Hiralal R Kapadia, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 271

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THE CANONICAL LITERATURE OF THE JAINAS identical structure. Each one of them has for its backbone the sentences above presented as 1A - which the Cūrni comprehends under the name dhuva-gandia and which, mutatis mutandis in a stereotyped repetition, concern themselves with an injury to the earth, water, and fire-elements, the plants, the mobile animals, and the wind-element -- all treated as living; a variation, which towards the end of 1, is introduced for the world taken as a whole (loga), is in 7 terminated with the bringing together of chajjīva-nikāya. The dhuva-gandiā is introuduced through and interrupted by the sentences of the Verse-Style which apparently should serve as illustration for the destruction of each of those types of living beings. It is, however, clear that in no way can they be always referred to the corresponding beings of the element-form. The pudho panā, allegedly the beings of the earth-form, should be exposed to the damage done to the mass of their bodily parts. However, leaving aside the fact that, to judge from the parallel-passages and language, the subject-matter here cannot be prthvī but only prthak-śritāḥ prānāḥ, the enumeration of the totality of bodily parts in 2, 23-30 is not compatible with these beings that are to be thought of as one-celled, so to say; it must rather refer to the higher organisms. In the fourth and seventh uddeśas in the VerseStyle there is the talk of a killing through fire and through a thrust or a stroke (pharisa). However, the grouping makes out a content for these parts which should refer to an injury done to fire, done to wind ! Deviating from the normal serialization which presents in succession the elements earth, water, fire and wind (e.g. Daśavaikālika 4) the vāu-sattha is not treated in the fifth uddeśa. One sees that in his ordering the editor has here allowed himself to be guided by the position of the verse where the words eja and sampāima have been - both wrongly - brought in relation to the element wind.
Now had the editor found ready-made the whole of dhuva-gandia for all the classes of living beings, or had he varied five times, for the sake of having an uniform structure for the chapter that was to be produced, the model found in the second uddeśa ? The circumstance that the repetitions uncritically reproduce the syntactical disorder of 2, 9. 11. 13. 15f. and the fragmentary new beginning of 20 speaks for the latter alternative. It would then be here standing forth, for the first time, a kind of independent handling of the text that is not without parallel. That is to say, it has apparently happened that with a view to getting a good ending for an uddeśa sentences are repeated from suitable places. The