Outline of Avasyaka Literature

Author(s): Ernst Leumann, George Baumann
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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E. Leumann, An outline of the Avaśyaka literature
synoptical text-outline based on the Devanāgarī recension of the Strasbourg manuscript ("S 360b": below Appendix III) with indications of metrical patterns of the verses and concordances underlining the affinity of the Kriyākalāpa with other textual members of the Avaśyaka group as represented both in the Digambara and in the Svetāmbara traditions. It is interesting to see that the pattern followed by the Kriyākalāpa is akin to the Svetāmbara Pratikramana manuals in the way that it alternates Sanskrit (or Prakrit) with vernacular languages (here Kannara).
Another of Leumann's perceptive insights is to have understood that there is a connection between the Svetāmbara Avasyaka structure and what the Digambaras called Arādhanā literature. This is a complex which centres around the Mülārādhanā or simply Ārādhanā (as Leumann calls it) written by Sivakotyārya in Jaina Sauraseni Prakrit and commented upon in Sanskrit by Aparājita. This work, which has ritual fasting to death as one of its main themes, contains in particular a large number of narrative verses referring to episodes of the lives of what could be called Jaina martyrs. These verses have given rise to a corpus of storybooks (kathākośas) in Sanskrit and Apabhramsa." There are many points of intersection both between the Digambara verses and their Svetāmbara counterparts as found in the Avaśyakaniryukti and some of the Prakīrņakas (which also deal with ritual fasting to death), and between the stories themselves. An example of comparative analysis in the Übersicht is provided by the Digambara treatment of the Bhadrabāhu story in its two versions (p. 68 and p. 71): what Leumann calls the “Bhadrabāhu-kathā” is the version of Prabhācandra, to which he had access at this stage through the later version of the story transmitted by another author of a story collection connected with the same complex, namely the Arādhanā-Kathākośa by Brahma Nemidatta (beginning of the 16th cent.)." This text was available to him through two Strasbourg manuscripts." What he calls "Bhadrabāhu-caritra", the second Digambara version he resorts to, is a modern version by Ratnanandin, edited by Hermann Jacobi.
It is important to remember that Leumann's work in the field of Jaina studies was very rarely based on printed editions. He worked directly from manuscripts. After more than a century of scholarship, some works that were included in Leumann's survey, including important ones, remain unpublished. Among them the Byhatkalpacūrni has found a courageous and competent editor in Pandit Rupendrakumar Pagaria who is currently working on it at the L.D. Institute of Indology. Tilakācārya's Āvaśyakalaghuvstti, a large Sanskrit commentary of the 13th century on the Āvasyakaniryukti is still in need of an editor." Leumann himself describes how his early work
14 The seminal study on this topic is A.N. Upadhye's critical introduction to Byhatkathākośa of Achārya Harisena, Bombay, 1943 (Singhi Jain Series 17) which gives a magistral survey with tables of concordances between the different representatives of the corpus 19 But Leumann's unpublished papers show that he also had direct access to Prabhācandra's story collection (see Plutat 1998: Nos. 373-374 (not seen by mel), although I do not know through which manuscript. Prabhācandra's work was published in 1974 by A.N. Upadhye on the basis of a single manuscript which belonged to the private collection of Pandit Nathuram Premi and is now kept at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute: Prabhācandra's Arādhana-Katha Prabandha or Kathākośa, Bhāratīya Jñānapītha, 1974 (Mānikacandra D. Jaina Granthamālā 35). Leumann's account (p. 71) is extremely faithful to the published version of Prabhācandra's story (No. 68 p. 93 in Upadhye's ed.). Harişena's account (No. 131 in Upadhye 1943) goes along the same line, but provides further material relating to the question of nudity and the wearing of half a garment (ardhaphālaka). It ends with the origin of the Yāpanasangha. 16 See details in Appendix IV note on p. 1. "For the original text of some stories see Balbir 1993 : 441-467.
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