Sambodhi 2012 Vol 35

Author(s): J B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 43

The Earliest Portions of Daśavaikālika-sūtra
M. A. Dhaky
An ancient exegetical tradition specifically ascribes the well-known anga-bāhya work, the Daśavaikālika-sūtra, to a single author, Ajja Sejjambhava or Sijjambhava (Ārya Sayyambhava or Svāyambhūva), the third patriarch (c. B.C. 370-340) after the apostle Sudharmă in the hagiological progression of what later was to emerge as the Svetāmbara sampradāya or the Švetapaa ämnāya of the Northern Nirgrantha Church". The brief anecdotal details recorded in those notices (and dependent as well as derivative accounts in subsequent literature) report on the circumstances under which the author Sayyambhava composed this famous and doubtless one of the few surviving more ancient and revered works of the Ardhamāgadhi canon. The tradition holds that, Arya Sayyambhava composed it for the benefit of Managa (Skt. Manaka), a boy-friar who happened to be the patriarch's own son before ordination and whose imminent death he is said to have foreseen". That this tradition for its central fact must be fairly ancient and, to all seeming, accurate is proven by a pointed, and indeed significant reference in the earlier portion (third phase, c. A.D. 100) of the 'Sthavirāvali or pontifical succession-list of the Paryusaņā-kalpa (compiled c. A.D. 503/516)". Therein, Ajja Sijjambhava is called 'Managa-pitā', father of Manaka". To recall and intersperse an eminent and very ancient patriarch's worldly relationship in a hagiological list of holymen ordinarily would seem unprecedented, irrelevant and queer just as unneeded and irreverent. Apparently, then, the compiler of this part of the 'Sthavirāvali knew the special bearing of what he was incorporating. In point of fact, its significance is independently clarified by later exegetical records. After all, no personal matter pertaining to any other patriarch or pontiff—be he figuring in this or in any other ancient hagiological list like the 'Sthavirāvali of the Nandi-Sūtra of Devavācaka (c. mid 5th cent. A.D.)', or for that matter in any pre-medieval, medieval or late medieval preceptoral