Jain Journal 1996 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 24

122
JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXX, No. 4. April 1996
has two Prakrit forms as paḍhamaddhassa and padhamatthe in a few pages gap. Which one is to be considered as the Sauraseni form? The paḍhamatthe can be derived from prathamarthe, but it has a different reading padhamaddhe. What I want to emphasize is that sometimes in the edited texts we might often get a wrong or irregular form of a language, e.g. Skt. kartavyā> Ś. kāyavvā, Skt. nikṣitavyā> Ś. nikkhiyavvā, and as far as Sauraseni is concerned, these forms are not regular, they should be corrected as kādavvā and nikkhidavvā.
The reading arihantāṇam is a puzzling one. It has three readings; arahantāṇam, arihantānam and aruhantānam. In the Hātigumphā Inscription of Khāravela at Udayagiri Hill in Bhubaneshwar belonging to the second or first century B.C., the reading arahantāṇam (namo arahamtāṇam namo sava-sidhāṇam) is found. This is, perhaps, the earliest written document where the reading arahantānam is available. Then the reading ariha- was developed in Prakrit from Sanskrit arha (cf. Hemacandra, rha-sri-hri-kṛtsna-kriya-diṣṭyāsvit, II. 104). So also we have the reading arihantāṇam (gen. pl); and this reading is mostly found in almost all the Jaina texts, canonical and non-canonical. Then, in course of time, before Hemacandra (1088-1172 A.D.), the reading aruha-was also developed (cf. Hemacandra, uccārhati, II, 111). I have seen this reading in the foot-note of the recently published text of Bhagavati-joḍa (1981) by the Jain Vishva Bharati Institute. Thus far is all right as far as the development of the Sanskrit word arha in Prakrit is concerned.
But the difficulty is-in some texts published by the same Institute or edited by the same scholar, the two readings - arahantānam and arihantānam are found. For example, in the Satkhandagama edited by Hiralal Jain the reading arihantāṇam is accepted, but in the Somasundara-cariu of Nayanandi (samvat 1100) edited by the same scholar, Hiralal Jain (1970, Vaiśāli), the reading of the namokkāramantra is arahantāṇam and not the other one. It has no variant in the foot-notes. If we consider his reading as correct, then we can say that the arahanta- reading was also prevalent in the samvat 1100. In the Bhagavati-joḍa of Jayācārya, published by the Jain Vishva Bhārati (1st edn 1981) we have two readings side by side. In the Prakrit namokkāra-mantra, the reading arahantāṇam is found, but in the duha (58) the reading is namo-arihantānam (parameṣṭhi pamcaka 'namo-arihantāṇam' āda). In the foot-note of this verse, the editor has mentioned that according to the vṛttikara, there are various forms of arahanta of which arihantānam and aruhantāṇam are variants. Again in duha (61) the reading arahantā is given. What I want to emphasize from all these discussions is that before editing a Prakrit text, a