History of Jaina Monachism

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

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S. B. DEO
WEBER, however, attributes it to a different reason. He remarks, "The loss of the entire Drștivāda is doubtless principally due to the fact that it had direct reference to the doctrines of the schismatics."40
JACOBI opines, "We know that the Drștivāda, which included the fourteen puvvas, dealt chiefly with the drșțis or philosophical opinions of the Jainas and other sects. It may thence be inferred that the puvvas related controversies held between Mahāvira and his rival teachers....Now if the discourses of Mahāvīra, remembered and handed down by his disciples, were chiefly controversies, they must have lost their interest when the opponents of Mahāvīra had died and the sects headed by them had become extinct."41
LEUMANN strikes an altogether different note when he says that the Drștivāda must have been full of details regarding magic, spells and such other matter, and hence was given up as a text of the Canon later on.42
Whatever be the exact reason for the loss of the Drstivāda one thing seems certain, and that is the gradual loss of it. CHARPENTIER comes to the same conclusion when he remarks that "All these explanations (for the loss of the twelfth Anga of the Jainas) seem to me to have one fault in commonviz., that of suggesting that the Drstivāda.....had been wilfully rejected by the Svetāmbaras themselves......Besides, against all such suggestions stand the statements of the Jainas themselves; for they clearly tell us that the puvvas became obsolete only gradually, so that the loss was not complete until a thousand years after the death of Mahāvīra-i.e., just at the time of the final redaction of the canon."43
The Council of Mathurā:
This tale of disorder and further loss of the sacred lore was repeated a few centuries afterwards.
In the ninth century after the Nirvāṇa of Mahāvīra, (i.e., 4th cent. A.D.) another great famine held the country in the grip of starvation which resulted in the death of many Jaina monks. At the end of the famine, however, another council was held at Mathurā under the presidentship of Arya Skandila and whatever remnant of the knowledge of the canon was available was collected together.44
40. 1. A., Vol. XVII, p. 286. 41. SBE, XXII, p. XLV. 42. C. J. SHAH, op. cit., pp. 230-31. 43. CHARPENTIER, Utt. Intr., pp. 22-3. 44. WEBER, 1. A., Vol. XVII, p. 282.