History of Jaina Monachism

Author(s): S B Deo
Publisher: Deccan College Research Institute

Page 24

HISTORY OF JAINA MONACHISM
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ditions had perhaps made it impossible for the monks to recollect and study their texts properly.
The Council found that the knowledge of the puvvas was lost and that nobody except Bhadrabāhu who was practising austerities somewhere in Nepal,36 knew them. The council requested him to reveal his knowledge to others but he refused to do so. Then being threatened with excommunication, he agreed to teach the puvvas to a group of some five hundred monks sent to him for that purpose by the Sangha. Out of the five hundred, only Sthūlabhadra showed the tenacity of mastering all the puvvas. But he too was handicapped by his master's order prohibiting him to teach the last four puvvas, out of the fourteen, to anybody for some transgression done by him. The final effect of the whole incident resulted in the loss of the last four puvvas, and the Pāķaliputra Council could, it seems, only collect the ten puvvas and the Angas.
The canon fixed by the Pāțaliputra Council which was 'undoubtedly the first origin of the Siddhānta',37 was not acknowledged by those who had returned to their home-lands from the south. Being dissatisfied with this attempt of the Council, they went to the length of disowning the canon and declared that the whole group of the Angas and the puvvas was lost forever. Thus the Digambaras came to hold the view that the canon as collected by the Pāțaliputra congregation was not a genuine one.38
The Loss of puvvas:
On the loss of the puvva texts which were said to be incorporated in the twelfth Anga Diţthivāya,39 different scholars hold different views and attribute various reasons for it.
The Jainas themselves seem to put forward the famine conditions, which seriously affected the daily routine of Jaina monks, as the cause of the nonstudy and the forgetting of the puvvas.
36. Avašyaka-C. II, p. 187. 37. C. J. SHAH, Jainism in North India, p. 221.
38. WINTERNITZ, op. cit., 2, p. 432. It may be noted that the tradition mentions the loss of the canon in the career of the previous Tirthankaras also. WEBER, I. A., Vol. XVII,
. 280 : "At the time of Usabha all the twelve Angas were extant; between Jinas 1-9 only the first eleven; between Jinas 9-16 all the twelve were lost; and under or between 16-24 they were all extant. The twelfth Anga was, however, lost again after Jina 24".
39. WEBER, 1. A., XX, p. 170.