Sambodhi 2012 Vol 35

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

Page 52

42
M. A. Dhaky
SAMBODHI
figuring in the Acārānga I and in the Brhat-Kalpasūtra ascribed to Arya Bhadrabāhu—occurs. All in all, the chapter is meant for a disciple who already had spent some years in monastic discipline, and indeed thus was not addressed to Manaka, even when it is sufficiently ancient, its antiquity plausibly going back to the Mauryan period.
The Daśavaikālika also possesses two cūlikās or appendices which the tradition ascribes not to mbhava but to the nun Daksā, the biological sister of Arya Sthūlabhadra". The introductory initial sūtras of the first of what is styled the Rativākya-cūlikā is in prose. Next follow verses in Sloka forming one group which in style resembles several other Anusubh verse groups in the main corpus of the Daśavaikälika. The subsequent eight verses are in Trisubh and in different style. This appended chapter, of course, is fairly ancient. The second cūlikā, having the rubric Viviktacaryā, admonishes the friar of what he must not eat and drink and how he must devote his time to introspection, meditation, and self-disciplinary practices. The inaugural verse in śloka is of later origin; so is the case with the next three verses which happened to be in Āryā metre. Verses 5-16 are in an ancient metre, the Trisubh. The bulk of this chapter (except for the initial four verses) is fairly ancient and can be of the period B.C. 250-150". (The date estimate here and elsewhere is based in relation to the totality of all the chapters of this work.)
This brief, and of necessity a preliminary and succinct survey indicates what the original and hence the earliest extant portion undoubtedly was composed by Arya Sayyambhava. The rest represent substitutions made at later dates perhaps for the lost original, or the original chapters were deliberately replaced by chapters containing material much of which is of sufficiently venerable age with a bearing on the code of conduct, admonitions, and red signals relating to the dangers which lay in the path, which the friars must avoid in monastic life. Seemingly, for the later pontiffs, the didactic aphorisms for a boy-friar were not useful for the grown up in the clergy and this obsolescence may have prompted their substitution by more pertinent verse collections, indeed more relevant to the friars grown beyond teen age.
As a sequel, the text of Chapter 1 and those verses from Chapter 2, which can be ascribed to Arya Sayyambhava, are appended. The original Ardhamāgadhi forms of the words of the text have been restored by removing the later Mahārāsrī Prakrit affectations, a procedure adopted here as well in the āgamic quotations cited (from the earlier texts) elsewhere in this article".