Mahanisiha Studies And Edition In Germany

Author(s): Chandrabhal Tripathi
Publisher: Chandrabhal Tripathi

Page 81

MAHĀNISĪHA STUDIES AND EDITION IN GERMANY
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calacalacalassa. He concludes that although it is impossible to date Mahānisīha, it is clearly a late composition, the occasional archaic form being a deliberate attempt by the author to invest his work with the sanctity of antiquity.
The editors have tackled the frequent obscurities and occasional corruptions of the Prakrit text with ability. Dr. Deleu's section appears as a fairly coherent portion of three chapters of theorizing about the extraction of the salyas, the explanation of the ripening of karma, and the avoidance of unworthy monks, whose bad attributes are categorized at great length in a typical Jain manner. This section serves as a prelude to the more legendary chapters which follow. The fourth chapter tells the story of Sumai and Naila, and the fifth, entitled Navaṇīyasāra, includes a long section on the relationship between the teacher and the gaccha.
The complaints which can be made against this book arise mainly from the fact that the two editors have worked separately, and there is a resultant lack of unity in their notes and indexes. Select lists are always open to the objection that one editor's selection may not coincide with another's, but in this case readers can be misled when, for example, Schubring lists āsāyaṇā, while Deleu does not, although he devotes a note to it (p.153); similarly, Deleu lists cunnajoga with a reference to Hamm's note on the word, but Schubring does not, although he has a footnote about it on p.234, with a reference to Jacobi's note on p.133 of SBE,XLV. Other examples could be given, and one feels that extra time spent in combining the indexes and standardizing the notes, with an extension of the grammatical study to cover Professor Schubring's chapters, would have made this volume even more useful.
There are some points which call for comment: the traditional derivation of sasarakkha < sarajaska was questioned by Charpentier (Uttaradhyayanasutra, p.341), who suggested *sasaraska; saḍahaḍassa is probably < śatati not saṭati, cf. Schubring's derivation of sāḍaṇa < śātana; Pischel (para.550) takes labbh- as a passive used actively rather than doubling of the consonant metri causa; to refer to vosirai as being an example of the interchange of ut- and ava- is surprising in view of the derivation by Pischel <*vy-ava-sṛ.
These complaints are, however, of minor importance when compared with the merits of this pair of editions. To have now available a critical edition of the whole of this text, important both for purposes of language study and knowledge of the development of Jainism, will be of inestimable benefit.
K.R.NORMAN
10.4 MNSt.C reviewed by Ludo Rocher in JAOS.88,3.1968, pp.563-565.
Twelve years after the publication of the Studien zum Mahānisīha, Kapitel 6-8 (F.R. Hamm and W. Schubring) the present volume deals with the remaining chapters 1-5 of the same cheyasutta; chapters 1-3 are edited and translated (into English) by J. Deleu, chapters 4-5 are edited and translated (into German) by W. Schubring.
In a Preliminary Note (p.1-2) Deleu points out the comparatively late date of the Mahānisiha; however, with Schubring and against Hamm, he holds the text to be older than Dharmadasa's Uvaesamala, "date unknown, probably about 900 A.D.".
The edition is based on eight manuscripts, which are described on p.3-4. The variant readings of four of these (M, P, p, x) are immediately rejected. Deleu does refer