Sacred Literature of Jains

Author(s): Ganeshchandra Lalwani, Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Jain Bhawan

Page 23

SACRED LITERATURE OF THE JAINS
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that is to say, groups of 32 syllables38 and by counting the latter by hundreds [232] or by thousands, which precautions according to Jacobi, Kalpas p.24 emanated from Devarddhigaại himself, have not been able to protect the text against the insertion of single words, or against abbreviations and omissions. The latter were then made good by reference to the parallel passages in other texts, cf.p. 228. All this, together with the dangers accruing from the constant copying of the MSS., has produced a state of confusion which is utterly irremediable. Often the catchwords alone, the skeletons of the page so to speak, are left, and that which must be supplied is to be found in the preceding, which was identical in tenor. The omitted portion was thus left to oral delivery or to oral instruction. The allusions to certain stereotyped descriptions, the epitheta ornantia, the so-called vannaa, varņaka, are doubtless to be referred to the period of the redaction,
So the text itself, as we see, has met with enormous losses in the course of time ; also the form of the words has suffered equally. I do not refer here to the frequent pāțhas, of which mention has already been made and which were intentionally changed from reasons of the most various character, but to the form of the words itself. The Prakrit of these texts was, as we have seen, page 221, afflicted in the very beginning with "a thorn in the flesh”. Its origin is to be sought in the East of India, in Magadha, and it was therefore proyided at the start with those peculiarities, or at least with a good part of them, which belonged to the Māgadhi dialect according to the testimony of the old inscriptions and of the tradition of the later grammarians. These texts were collected for the first time [233] by the Council of Pāțaliputra probably in that dialect, and after 800 years' transmission by word of mouth, if we trust the voice of tradition, were codified in writing in Western India. In this codification the attempt was doubtless made to preserve a part of the ancient grammatical form, particularly the termination of the Nom. sing. Masc. of the 1st decl., in e not in o. Such was the ancient colouring of the language of the "Scriptures", as the texts were now called. But, aside from this attempt at preserving an ancient flavouring, it may be stated as a general proposition that the texts were written down in that form, which the language assumed at the time and place where the written codification took place. In the case of those texts which were then not merely collected or compiled from ancient material, but newly created by the sole assistance of this ancient material, the desire to preserve the ancient
38 Also called Sloka or anusfubh. See Ind. Streifen, III. p. 212.