Outline of Avasyaka Literature

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

Page 19

Introductory essay and tools by Nalini Balbir
Among the most accessible passages in the Übersicht are the accurate and readable translations of the relevant Prakrit prose formulas or verses corresponding to these obligatory duties (p. 15, 17, 19f.). In Leumann's time it was a novelty to have this in translation. The superscribed Arabic numbers, i.e. Āv.?, Av. and Āv.", relate to developmental stages of the literary complex. The first entity of "obligatory” duties, however, is not totally fixed. It is subject to reorganization and variation in the course of the textual development. Hence the modifications in the list in the stage Av.' (p. 3). Specialized works dealing only with one or several of the obligatory duties, but not all of them, such as Devendra's Bhāsyas also belong to this stage.
Textual layers can be identified by using metre as a chronological criterion; Jacobi and Leumann were the two masters of the German school with respect to Jaina texts. The rarity of the gāthā metre (i.e. the āryā) in canonical works such as the Uttarādhyayanasūtra was rightly noticed by Leumann (p. 18) and was to become the subject of a detailed investigation by L. Alsdorf.2. Attention to the historical significance which can be deduced from the nature of the metre, present at many places (see, in particular, p. 57, the difference between the śloka period" and "the gāthā period”; p. 62; p. 86 relationship between the ViśĀvBh and the KalpaBh) also explains why Leumann almost systematically names the metre of a given verse in the Übersicht. Never satisfied with a simplistic solution, Leumann was, however, quite aware of the limitations of the metrical criterion (p. 59).
A similar historical method aiming at understanding the history of the text and its commentaries is applied, in the second part of the Übersicht, to Jinabhadra's Višeșāvasyaka-bhāsya, which “has experienced a special text-history” (p. 87; German: "Jinabhadra's Werk hat wiederum eine besondere Textgeschichte erlebt", p. 32°56). As usual, Leumann approached this text through manuscripts: three of them containing the Bhāşya alone; another containing what Leumann calls Sīlānka's commentary, and four (or sometimes five) containing Hemacandra Maladhārin's commentary, both in Sanskrit.22 They correspond to three recensions: “The original recension of the Višeşāvasyaka-bhāşya", "Sīlānka's text” and “Hemacandra's recension” (p. 87ff.). Firstly, Sīlānka and Hemacandra are analyzed as readers and as editors of the Bhāsya (p. 94) which they have transmitted in their own ways and in relation with their position towards the Niryukti. They are agents of "textual criticism".29 The novelty of the material and of the subject explains the step by step technical analysis undertaken by Leumann. It starts with the information preserved in the colophon of the only available manuscript, and goes on to all the internal data liable to throw light on the structure of the text (traditional methods of counting the verses, i.e. granthầgra, and sectional colophons). Tables and conspectuses showing the numbering of verses in the various recensions are the correlated tool of such an approach (p. 92ff.). Moreover, the originality of Jinabhadra's work is best shown through the use he makes of extraneous material. Among the sources he resorted to is the (Brhat)Kalpabhäsya (p. 98). This part of the Übersicht culminates in the "summary contents” of Jinabhadra's work (p. 124ff.). This detailed conspectus is a precious guide to the understanding of the macro-structure of this extensive and
21 L. Alsdorf, The Arya Stanzas of the Uttarajhāyā. Contributions to the Text History and Interpretation of a Canonical Jaina Text, Wiesbaden, 1966; Id., Die Arya-Strophen des Pāli-Kanons, Wiesbaden, 1967, further K. Bruhn, "Ludwig Alsdorf's Studies in the Arya" in Berliner Indologische Studien 9/10, 1996, pp. 7-53. 22 See Appendix III for information about the mansucripts. 23 German “Textkritik", cf. Übersicht p. 150.
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