Mahanisiha Studies And Edition In Germany

Author(s): Chandrabhal Tripathi
Publisher: Chandrabhal Tripathi

Page 70

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Chandrabhal Tripathi
Canon had not been subjected to the well known successive stages of commentaries, [not a single țikā is available]. An anonymous complains about the miserable condition of the original he was copying, at the same time he defends the MNA. The name of Haribhadra included in this notice may be accepted, who, about the middle of the 8th century AD, might have held in his hands a copy of the text; but the revision of the text ascribed to Haribhadra (III.§25.10: 49.4) is not probable. According to the remarks in IV.§18 (see ¶9.7) Haribhadra had his doubts about certain details in the narrative. He might have, therefore, put aside the whole text, as a result of which the Ms. suffered the damages mentioned (see I.§28.3: B,p.30; also A,p.4; Weber, HTJ,p.456). That these damages occurred before Haribhadra is, in view of the shortness of intervening period, not probable, inspite of such remarks in the Prabhāvaka-carita of Prabhācandra54 which clearly follows 1.$28.3 of our text. Utilizing III.$25.10, the Vividha-tirtha-kalpa of Jinaprabha-sūri (see JRK,p.160: Tirtha-k., composed between samvat 1365-1390) reports a similar legend, where not Haribhadra, but the much earlier Jinabhadra-gaņi is brought into picture. If either of these great scholars (Jinabhadra or Haribhadra) had revised the text of the MNA, he would not have allowed so many linguistic and metrical defects and peculiarities in the text to remain uncorrected.
8.2.8 In a kind of expansion, the note in III.§25 goes even further than the material data and the work of a single person is turned into the activity of a large convent of scholars. When the scribe seeks authority in great names, he rather discloses the aloofness of the MNA; the respect due to an authentic text of the Canon would have been too self-evident to need any emphasis. The list of the names is out of sequence and mysterious. [See Deleu's remarks in 18.3.] Because of the name of Nemicandra (samvat 1278) this note has to be dated as late as the 13th cent. AD. which means that it is comparatively late. The tradition that the Canon owes its origin to Mahavira and its authorship to Ganadhara (see Avafyaka-niryukti, vs.92) has been applied to the MNA too, mainly for the purposes of defence. Simultaneously the exegetical sequence of
54
See Prabhācandra, Prabhāvaka-carita, ed. Jinavijaya Muni (Bombay: SJS. 13. 1940), IXth Haribhadracar., vs.219 on p.75:
cira-likhita-viśīrṇa-varna-bhagna-pravivara-patra-samuha-pustakastham |
kuśala-matir ihôddadhara jainôpaniṣadikam sa Mahāniśītha-śāstram II
See also Deleu,MNSt.B,p.2,fn.2,lines 5-6.