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On the Antiquity and Original Parts of the "Pundarīka Adhyayana,” Sūtrakṣtānga (II)
[Earlier published in the Jaina Agama Sahitya, Seminar on Jaina Āgama Sahitya (1986), Ed. K. R. Chandra, Ahmedabad 1992, pp. 7-16.
The present is its revised edition.]
M. A. Dhaky
The seven appendices forming the Book II of the second anga work, the Sūtrakrta,' by and large happen to be not only fairly ancient; they are also interesting on account of their content and antiquity; hence important from research standpoint. Of these, the first adhyayana entitled "Pundarīka" is in part more ancient than the remaining six. It apparently has not been analysed or studied in depth notwithstanding its admissibly good translations in English and in Gujarātī (as also now in Hindi) which for some decades are available.
The “Pundarīka-adhyayana" , in its present shape, is the result of three major efforts and hence three distinct strata correspondingly of three separate periods. Its oldest, and hence the original, part is represented by the opening sūtras 638-643, comparable in antiquity to some of the oldest portions of the Book I of the Ācārānga.
The Pundarīka chapter pertains to an allegory of a lotus pond (puskarani) full of white lotuses (pundarīkas) of which the taller, larger, and the most magnificent grown at the central spot of the pond is the main focus, the motival maxim, around which the repetitious phrases of the text in very archaic style are made to revolve. As the allegorical essence purports, four presumptuous persons coming in turn from four cardinal directions, and each wanting to get the large central lotus, attempted to reach it by entering into the pond and each in his own turn got stuck in the mud, even as each one had condemned his predecessor as ignorant, inefficient et cetera claiming, of course, the opposite for himself. The fifth one, a genuine samaritan (bhikkhū), who came from an intermediate direction and who knew how to get the centrally situated lotus, (even) while staying at the bank, commanded the lotus to fly
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