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Walther Schubring's Analysis of his 1910 Ācārânga-Sūtra (Āyār'anga-suttam) edition
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is related: 1C, 3B, 6B: I = world, i.e., protection of beings (52); 1D, 2D, 6C: loyalty and relapse, what does relapse consist of? why does it happen?; 3C, 4B: equanimity in physical and mental temptations. In the first case the assertion of an old connection is not demonstrable, but more so in the last.
Here one sees the immediate link through eyam and, in comparison to the other pieces, the recurrent form of address; an indirect proof is that the previous gabbh'āi in 23, 13, in recalling 17, 10, gives rise to line 17, 24, a feature that will be referred to below. What cannot be connected is 2C which is itself split through the dissimilarity in naming the organs; 5B makes up a rounded whole which does not appear to require any extension, but still 8C would be connected here. Although three age groups are mentioned there, only the latter two are described; I find the first in 5B where the comments seem to be about the younger monk (21, 6 23, 2, perhaps also 24, 2). Further, 22, 26 is parallel to 35, 6. The language of 5B evinces various peculiarities: hoi and hou next to bhavai (which in 29, 12 = 21, 16 is replaced by hoi), etc.; kaya instead of kaļa, viyakkhāya and vikkhāya next to viyāhiya; conspicuous is the use of magga in 22, 9 and of guna in 24, 14. Also the influence of a vaitāliya section in 24, 28f. deserves to be mentioned.
Of the places in the triştubh style, finally, IE, 2A, 3A, 4C and 8D deal with the content of the doctrine and, moreover, without a planned construction; 3A is connected to 2A as a direct continuation because the dukkha in 13, 9 is nothing else but the harm producing chana in 12, 30. 3A to16, 4f. and also 4C to 18, 12ff. contain references to heretical views. And in the connection between 1E and 2A one notes that here, as in 23, 23 after the sentence se vasumam - no annesim one of the rhetorical figures which are not seldom follows in the text (see below). The remaining tristubh groups 5C and 6A belong together through the common relation to the reception which the doctrine finds in the listeners.
In the conclusion of this investigation of what belongs together the question now emerges: what in fact is the so-called "verse style”? The most obvious explanation is assuming them to be sermons in prose with richly strewn quotations in verse, an impression expressed by Jacobi 1884 in the introduction (p. xlviii) to his translation. Opposed to it, however, now that the proper relations have come to light, is that in these complexes there are only metrically similar verses or fragments. That is, the prose is not primary, because it would then be inexplicable why their author extracted the illustrative quotations only from similar sources, but rather that precisely these metrical components make up the skeleton of our verse style. Popular series of stanzas were at the basis of these explanatory and interpretive addresses. These (53) addresses themselves, however, have not come down to us in their completeness. Rather, they are extant firstly only where their connection to the verses was especially intimate, in between
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