Mahaviras Word

Author(s): Walther Shubring
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 34

The Canon of the Svetāmbara Jainas
15
way described above (p. 8). We have noticed such a substitution when we spoke about the filling up of a stock of legends.
Even within the texts themselves an ordering hand is noticeable. As already touched upon (p. 13 above), such a hand organized the first main part of the Süyagada and Culāo 1 and 2 according to descending order of the length of each section. That in the Thāņa the lists of numbers from the conception of the world and teachings of the saints (14) were placed respectively at the end of each section is less significant than the fact that three large presentations were incorporated into the Samavāya as the continuation of the Thāna only because they are introduced by numbers: duvālas 'ange gani-pidage pannatte, "the canon has twelve Angas"; duve rāsi pannattā, "there are two large groups (namely, the sentient and the insentient)"; ... satta kulagarā hotthā, "there were ... seven ancestors". This is more important for us as the first example of the sequence of the parts on the basis of a completely exterior point of view. For originally these fragments belonged to the "question texts" (p. 10) and, according to this form, would be appropriate say in the Viyāhapannatti. But at least the first of these, the survey of the content already mentioned, is too young to come into question as a member of this collection. We have before us the undoubted desire for a correct order, whereas elsewhere a pious deception' is just as clearly evident. Thus: when in the sixth Dasā the description of damsaņa-sāvaga, of a lay person in desire but not yet in action, is replaced, apart from the conclusion, by the description of akiriya-või and kiriyā-vāi; or when in the Jivābhigama, in the middle of the description of the stellar deities, a new work, the Dīvasāgarapannatti begins (folio 435a);42 and apart from these, after dealing with another three short fragments, incidentally in the same strain as in the fifth Anga, then what was silently abandoned is just as silently taken up again. To this belongs also the already described substitution of whole sections with the titles retained (p. 14).
This arrangement of the individual sections in the Samavāya and Jivābhigama indicates maximum and minimum possibilities of good faith, seen perhaps only from the western standpoint. There are other occurrences between both these extremes. The continuity is often established just by a word or a series of words, indeed by a mere echo. When in Kappa 5, 6-9 we read: bhikkhu ya uggaya-vittie... and in 5, 10: iha khalu nigganthassa ... uggāle āgacchejjā, then this is a combination according to the sound of two rules that are of different origin.44 The
42 Kirfel 1925, pp. 50ff. 43 See Schubring 1905, pp. 32 and 57 (WB). 44 See Schubring 1921a, pp. 5ff.