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A PROPOS OF THE BOȚÍKA SECT
M. A. Dhaky Sagarmal Jain
Up to the period of the nir yuktis (c. A. D. 5251), the Svetāmbara Jaina canon noticed only seven nihnavas (heretices), each of whom had differed on one singular point from, or one aspect or interpretation of, one or the other early doctrine of the Nirgrantha religion?. Partly basing his exposition on the immediately preceding, rather succinct, exegetical notices and partly on the then current elucidatory traditions on such and similar old records, Jinabhadra gani kşamāśramaņa in the Vises = Avašyaka-bhāşya (c. A. D. 5853), presents an historical as well as quasi-historical account of these traditional seven, plus an additional or the eighth heretic, Sivabhūti. While the preceding more ancient seven nihnavas ultimately had been proven inconsequential, the eighth one,--the heresiarch Sivabhūti, --by his separation from the main ecclesiastical stream, brought about a major schism which eventually grew into a definite, viable, and an important sect with a school of thinking and practice that was branded “Botika dřsti (Bodiä ditthi)" by the post-āgamic Svetāmbara commentators.
The term “Botika" ("Bodiya" or "Bodiyāņa" in Jaina Mahārāştri and Bodiga" or "Bodiä" in late Ardha-Māgadhi) has been taken to mean “Digambara" by current Svetāmbara writers, 4 a misinterpretation that has been perpetrated presumably from the time of the late medieval Svetāmbara writings onward, and had of late attracted unwarranted attacks on Jinabhadra gani kşamāramana by some pundits of the Digambara sect who did not suspect that the interpretation of the term and hence the ascription of the sect was wrongs. Indeed," Walther Schubring was aware that the term did not originally.imply the way it was later thought to be. Schubring, however, suggested no alternative interpretation. It was Muni Jambuvijaya who made a right guess that the appelation "Botika" had meant Yapaniya'.
Let it at the outset be clarified that, before Jinabhadra gıņi, th: term "Bodiya" is mentioned in the Bhāşya (c. A. D. 550-575) on the Āvaśyaka-sūtra;8 the bhāşya-gātha, moreover, reports the date of the origination of "Bodiya dițghi" to be V. N. S. 609/A.D. 1329. The still earlier Müla-bhāsya (C. A. D. 550) briefly alludes to a question asked by Sivabhūti to Arya Krşņa at Rathavirapura (the place of schism, unidentified, perhaps somewhere in M. P. or U. P., 10) which
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