Sacred Literature of Jains

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

Page 33

SACRED LITERATURE OF THE JAINS
this enmity can be clearly discerned in the statements, which have been preserved in reference to the twelfth anga. It may be permitted here to refer to the discussion of the same later on. According to these statements, the first two of the five parts in which it was presumably divided, dealt with the views (drsti) of the heterodox sects, the ājiviya and the terāsia62 besides treating of other subjects. [248] The name drsțivāda may perhaps be explained by reference to this fact. The third part consisted of the so-colled 14 pūrvas, the contents of which was probably not in entire harmony with the sect of the Svetāmbaras, which had gradually arrogated to itself the position of being the representative of orthodoxy. This then is perhaps the reason for the loss of the twelfth angam. .
The remaining extant eleven angas by no means represent a unit since they fall into several groups, the single members of which are marked by certain formal peculiarities, which prove a connection closer in the case of some than in that of others.
The first of those groups is formed by angas 1-4, all the larger divisions of which close with the words ti bemi, iti bravimi ; and according to the Scholia, Sudharman, Mahāvira's pupil, is regareded as the one who gives utterance to this formula. The prose portions begin with the formula ; suyaṁ me ausaṁ! teņam bhagavayā evam akkhāyam. "I have heard, 0 long-lived one! Thus has that saint spoken." Sudharman is the speaker, according to the Scholia. In this formula,63 which characterizes the contents as the oral transmission of the utterances of Mahāvira, a scholar of Sudharman, i. e. Jambu, is the one addressed. This introductory formula is found also in other texts of the Siddhānta at the commencement of the prose sections; and with this the closing formula ti bemi is generally connected. From this it appears to me that an immediate connection of these portions with the first four angas is here eo ipso indicated, in so far as in all probability [249] all bear the traces of a unifying hand. In regard to the especial connection of angas 1-3 with one another, this fact deserves mention that in anga 4, 57 they apper as a group which belongs by itself or as the 'three
in the 14 pūrvas, Sthūlabhadra, the mere knowledge of the last four purvas is said to have vanished, this is in no greater agreement with the information derived from the Siddhānta itself (see above, p. 215) than with the above statements in reference
to Vajra's activity in the case of the ditthivaa. See above, page 215. 62 The traditional date for the foundation of this sect--544 after Vira is exactly 374
years later than the date which is set for Bhadrabāhu the supposed last teacher of
the 14 purva-(kalasatts. v. 37). 63 This is explained in very different ways.
of this sect above, patatements derived from