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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
16
Kalpasutra
more on their memory than on written books') as was generally the case in India. Devarddhigaņin, the Buddhaghosha of the Jainas, has most probably arranged the whole of the traditional Jaina Literature, which he gathered in the Âgamas from books and from the mouth of living theologians. He was nearly too late for his task. For in many cases, fragments only of books were left, and he put them together to make up a book as he thought best. Under that supposition only can it be understood, why so many books consist of incoherent parts ?). To the editor of the Jaina books their present arrangement is, most probably, due; he divided them into chapters, and introduced the method of counting
ranthas (or çlokas i. e. 32 aksharas), the number of which, from hundred to hundred, or thousand to thousand, is inserted in the text at nearly the same places in all MSS. Those “milestones” were invented to guard the text against additions, for which purpose, however, they proved insufficient.
Even after Devarddhigaṇin the Jaina books were liable to many alterations. The various readings found in our MSS. are, it must be conceded, neither very important nor very numerous, except those which are caused by different systems of orthography. But it must have been different in a former period. For the commentaries mention a great number of pathas which are not confirmed by our MSS. of the text. I am, therefore, inclined to believe that the text, which was adopted by most commentators of the work, and which is exhibited in the MSS. of the text only, is the recension of the oldest scholiasts. As far as the Kalpasútra is concerned, I am convinced that such is the fact. The commentaries we have, are, directly or indirectly, based on the old cûrnis or vrittis written in Prakrit, which are now either lost or extant in very few copies only. Those oldest commentators must have found the text in great disorder, for they had to note down numerous pâthas many of which are mentioned by the later scholiasts. Some of them remark that they comment on one pâtha only, for instance Devendraganin, who wrote a commentary on the Uttarâdhyayana. Others say that for all the pathas one should have recourse to the cûrņi, e. g. Jinaprabhamuni, the oldest commentator of the
1) About 30 years earlier, between 410 and 432 A.D., Buddhaghosha caused the Buddhist pitakas and arthakathâs to be written down in books for the more lasting stability of faith". As the redaction of the Buddhist works in Ceylon and that of the Jaina works in Guzerat occurred about the saine tiine, it may be inferred either that the Jainas adopted that measure from the Bauddhas, or that it was in the 5th century that writing was more generally made use of in India for literary purposes.
2) Down to Devardhiganin's time the Jainas must have handed down their sacred knowledge very carelessly indeed. For, eight generations after Mahâvîra, a part of the ,,old" works was already forgotten, and less than ten generations later the whole of the purvas was lost. At least, such is the tradition.
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