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140
Mahāvira's Words by Walther Schubring
6. [b.] [Though) some wandering brothers and brahmins have disregarded these fetters, [yet] they do not know, (although] they pretend to know.' [Besides, about some people one can say further:) 'the people are entangled in desire'. [One hears (this):]
7.[1.] “There are five elements that are mentioned by some here in the world: earth, water, fire, wind and, as the fifth, air is added. 8. These [are) the five elements. Out of them [originates) the one (spirit]," so they say." Further: "Through their disappearance, the soul disappears. 9. And just as in a heap of earth the one (substance) in fact appears (to be) manifold, so, mark this, in the whole world the spirit in fact appears (to be) manifold."!2 10. So some say (who are) of dull intellect, devoted to finjurious) activity. [And thereby] one is indeed,] when one (hereby) has oneself done injustice, [himself] participating in bitter suffering (for it) (read: nigacchai).'
11. [2.] “Fools and wise ones are each one full soul each (not more and not less]. They are, [but] after death they are not [anymore). There are no beings which would experience reembodiment.'12. There is no merit or offence, there is no world beyond this. Through the disappearance of the body the soul disappears."
13. [3.] "There is not anything that acted nor caused to act, not anything at all that acts. Hence, the soul (too) is not acting.” So they assert boldly. 14. But those who speak so, how according to their opinion does the world come about? From one darkness they go further into
Instead of viussittā (for which also viussiya = vyucchritāḥ) perhaps viussantā (= *vidvasyamānāh, cp. viussanti in 1, 2, 23) is to be read.
A quotation, as indeed the change of subject shows; cp. Ayār. I 27,29 (1, 6, 1, 4). The hint already points at 1, 3, 10ff. (See the addition to this footnote in Appendix 4.)
Or: "These (te), know this (bho), are called the one". Bb and C have te bho as a second explanation; āhiya which otherwise means āhitäh in the sense of ākhyātāh, here with sil. means ākhyātavantah (formally, it means rather ähitavantah). (Ahiyä may correspond to Skt. ährtäh (Bhatt 1978, p. 104), but cf. Norman 1996, p. 180f.: it is "from the root ākhyā-." Sil.'s commentary is discussed by Jayatilleke 1963, p. 74 (WB).)
12 sil. read (as also a Berlin MS): ... loe ege nānā hi vattai, from which it follows that vinnu in stanza 9 really is ega in stanza 8. (This may be the implicit reason why Schubring takes stanzas 7-10 as belonging to one doctrine, against the tradition. Data about the old schools is very scanty and Sil.'s comment requires caution. See also Glasenapp 1940, p. 147; Bollée 1977, pp. 62f.; and Norman 1996, p. 173 (WB).)
The spirit then, which would apparently be common to all, is indeed individual (cp. Jacobi 1895, p. 237) -thus the view and rejection of the ek'ātma-(ātmâdvaita-)vādin. i.e. Vedānta. See Bollée 1977, p. 63 (WB).)
14 Or: there is "no being" (satta). The restricted sense in which Windisch 1908, pp. 190f. interprets the Pāli word opapātika ("criginating immediately") in the Mahāli and Pāyāsi Suttas is not justified.
15 Thus the tajjivatassa(taccha)rira-vādin. (Prince Paesi was probably one of these, see Bollée 2002, $ 750 et passim and 1977, p. 64. The inseparability of body and soul is stressed by the chiastic word order (WB).) 16 The akāraka-(akarmaka-)vādin.
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