Jain Agam Sahitya

Author(s): K R Chandra
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 34

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On....... Pundarika Adhyayana
The third stratum of the text embodying sutras 646-693, intended to enlarge upon the preceding shorter commentary, is the thickest and apparently is a conglomerate of several partly relevant or distantly and derivatively relaicd passages of varying lurgths, some even seeming extraneous. The central idea of those few passages, which alone seem relevant (and among themselves consistent), are those which clarify the 'creeds' or 'schools of thinking' represented by the “ four puruşas " and the refutation of their beliefs on a primary level. But there are 100 many other passages, which the compiler (and possibly also interpolators) had thought to have an explanatory bearing on what the niryukti part had to say. In the process, passages from varied sources, of diffc rent dates and of differing stylistic consistencies are all huddled up together. Some of these passages (651, 680) are from as ancient a source as the Ācāränga I (203, 132); and a few others in a style with an early look are 668, 673, and 674. The bulk of the rest may have been composed and next compiled in the first two centuries of the Christian Era.?
The illustrious Digambara scholiast Svāmi Virasena in his Dhavală ţika (c. A. D. 800-817) on the Șatklandagama of Puşpadanta and Bhūtabali (c. late 5th or early 6th cent. A. D.), includes, on the basis apparently of some Yapanıya sources, the Pundariku and the Mahapundarika among the anga-bāhya class of texts. 9 Could these two texts have been amalgamated into the "Pundarikaadhyayana" of the Sūtrakstānga ? After all, the whole of its second Book is made up of appendices' put together probably in the Kuşana period, and possibly before A. D. 200 when the Yäpaniya sect separated from the main stream of Nirgrantha Church. Notes and References 1. Sūyagadangasuttan, Ed. Muni Jambūvijaya, Jaina-Agama
Series No. 2 (2), Shri Mahāvira Jaina Vidyalaya, Bombay, 1978, Book II, pp. 121-151. This is a somewhat better, methodically more useful than any previous edition of the work. I have consulted this edition for this paper..