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M. A. Dhaky
Jina Mahāvira seemingly was fond of allegories and riddles as revealed from the earliar portions of the Ācaränga; and the Pundarika-allegory is strongly reminiscent of his personal style, verve, predilection, and peculiar mannerism. So, it is to all seeming a genuine fragment of a text which for its content can be referred back to Mahavira. As for the choice of expressions and words in this archaic part, it is parallaled not only in the Acaränga (I. 1)* but also in the Sūtrakstāňġa, in its “Mahavira-stava' (I. 6) (c. 20dIst cent. B. C):5
The Niryukti that in sequence follows the older original text is positively younger in style, mannerism, and idiom. This commentarial part may have been added by way of clarification of the main allegorical text sometime in c. 1st cent. B. C.-A. D. While it offers fairly plausible, indeed admissible interpretation of several connected metaphors in the older text, it has failed to produce convincing explanation of the word pundarika itself. It likens it, of course wrongly, to a king' (for the central) and to the 'subjects' for the other (surrounding) smaller lotuses. But why must the king “fiy up"? Why do the followers of other creeds desire and attempt to possess the pundarıka if it is just a metaphor for a 'king'? (Surely these were not the pre-medieval and medieval times when pontiffs of different religions did not disdain royal patronage, in fact they often, and jealously, vied with one another for getting it. The commentary's calling the “fiying up“ of this central lotus as “nirvāṇ," is one other fallacy. For the central lotus itself, as far as it can be guessed, was intended to represent nirvana. And "flying up" of the lotus seems sensibly to symbolise the process of attainment of liberation. The main text in point of fact refers to each person as desiring “to uproot and pluck (unnikhissami), the central white lotus" which would imply that each one of differing creed was hoping and trying for attaining nirvana through his own individual path, but failed. The monk, believably of Nirgrantha persuation in this context, was the only soul who had followed the right path, the genuine law (dhamma). The other lesser lotuses possibly are intended to stand for attractive siddhi-rewards, but not the much coveted singular, ultimate achievement, release from the cycles of births and deaths, 6
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