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BOOK I, LECTURE 2, CHAPTER 1.
249
SECOND LECTURE ?,
CALLED
THE DESTRUCTION OF KARMAN.
FIRST CHAPTER.
(Rishabha said to his sons) :
Acquire perfect knowledge of the Law! why do you not study it? It is difficult to obtain instruction in it after this life. The days (that are gone by) will never return, por is it easy a second time to obtain human birth. (1)
See, young and old men, even children in the mother's womb die. As a hawk catches a quail, so (life) will end when its time is spent? (2)
1 The name of this lecture, which occurs in its last line, is vêvâlîya, because, as the author of the Niryukti remarks, it treats on vidârika, destruction (of Karman), and because it is composed in the Vaitâlîya metre. For either word, vaidârika (or rather vaidâlika, cf. karmavidalana) and vaitâlîya may, in Gaina Prâkrit, become vêyâlîya or vêtâliya. A play of words was apparently intended; it would have been impossible, if both words had not become identical in sound. We may, therefore, conclude that the language of the author obeyed the same phonetic laws as the Gaina Prâkrit exhibited in our MSS., or in other words, that the text has been written down in about the same language in which it was originally composed. The name of the Fifteenth Lecture leads to the same inference ; for it is called gamaiya (yamakîya) because each of its verses contains the verbal ornament called ya maka, and because it opens with the words gam aîyam (yad atîtam).
2 One MS. here inserts gîvâna gîviyam, the life of living beings.
