Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 195

188
7. DELEU
Little need be said about the stereotyped form in which the records of such old disputes have been handed down. The situation, almost invariably, is the one we know from other texts of the pannattı type: Mahāvīra answering Goyama Indabhūi's questions. In this case Goyama, as a rule, will ask his master to pronounce upon such-or-such heterodox view and Mahāvīra will simply, without any argumentation, reject it and proclaim his own view on the topic in question. Four fragments, though, are of a somewhat different nature: occasionally Mahāvīra does not interfere before his disciples (viz. Goyama himself in VII 101 – 323b and XVIII 82 – 754b, some unnamed therā bhagavanto in VIII 71 – 379a, and a layman called Madduya in XVIII 74 = 750b) have been confronted with questions posed by the anyatīrthikas, or have had to plead the Jaina cause against their accusations; moreover, two of these texts supply the names of the heterodox interlocutors. These remarkable exceptions to the conventional style of the ordinary pannattis prove, I think, that the anyatīrthika fragments have transmitted to us some genuine information about what Mahāvīra's teaching activity actually was like. Therefore they supplement the knowledge that we may gather, in this domain, from certain conversion stories in the Viy.1 as well as from other canonical works such as Sūyagada etc.
Let us now consider the said texts from the content point of view. The topics under discussion prove to be of a great diversity, ranging say from the origin of a hot spring in the neighbourhood of Rajgir (II 57 – 141a)2 up to the essence of matter and soul 1. The great majority of these stories, which must no doubt be reckoned
among the most fundamental parts of the Anga's old nucleus, have been inserted in sayas IX-XVI, where no passages dealing with the dissidents are in evidence. This obviously implies that the redactors of the Vay. placed both kinds of texts on the same footing. The space of a short article does not allow me to enter into such minor clashes of opinion, the more so as some of the allegations of these an yatirthikas sound rather absurd; thus eg. V 65 = 230b and XVIII 71 = 749a. Or do we, in such cases, miss the necessary background to understand exactly what is meant?
2.