Mahanisiha Studies And Edition In Germany

Author(s): Chandrabhal Tripathi
Publisher: Chandrabhal Tripathi

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MAHĀNISIHA STUDIES AND EDITION IN GERMANY
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visited by the active teacher Kuvalayappaha. They receive him with respect and request him to stay in the shrine, he rejects this as unworthy (sāvajja), hence he gets the nickname sāvajj'āyariya which does not disturb him. Soon thereafter some doubts arise in the mind of monks who now devote themselves more to the teaching. They call Kuvalayappaha back, he clears their doubts and explains them the Canon. But in the presence of the monks a woman bowed down in respect at his feet and touched them. Now, while explaining the 5th Chapter of the Mahānisiha (!), the verse 127, where it is told that an Arhat should not tolerate the touch of a woman, he overcomes his fear that he might be given another nickname (mudd'anka), and the temptation either to pass over or to explain in a different way the verse. Hence he becomes an object of reproach. Inspite of arduous thinking, disturbed by crude urging of the listeners, he is unable to find a suitable argument (parihāraga) which would save him. At the end he knows nothing more than to declare that the Canon knows both rules and exceptions and that its teachings are without exclusiveness. Because of this declaration, which was to the taste of the monks, he will have to atone for it during a long wandering in the samsāra.
36-39. Some of his after-births are dealt with. The daughter of a purohita, in the service of a trader in spices, has the dohada to eat meat and saktu, which she acquires by selling away precious items belonging to her master. For this offence, she is, as the custom demands, kept in custody in her house during the time of her pregnancy. When she has delivered a son, the soul of Kuvalayappaha reincarnate, she runs away. At the orders of the king the child is reared well and later on appointed as the superintendant of the slaughter-house (sūņâhivai). This job leads him to the worst of hells. As the son of a brahmin woman, widowed in young age, he is born with severe diseases and lives a life of seven hundred years in which he experiences only atrocious treatment and hardships. As a bullock working in an oil-press he suffers for 19 long years from worms which clung in its wounded shoulders. In the time of Pārsva, he reaches emancipation. At the end of the chapter it is explained how the answer of Kuvalayappaha was sinful.
Chap. VI: Giyattha-vihāra (Hamm,pp.9-13; Cf. MNSt.A, pp.21-26) The term giyattha has been explained in the commentary on the Gacchâcāra, vs.41 (gitam sūtram, arthas tasya vyākhyānam, tad-dvayena yukto gitârthah) and in the