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CHAPTER V
SAMAVAYANGA (SAMAVAYAMGA)
This sutra is counted as the fourth Anga of the Jain Agama which may be regarded as a Jaina canonical compilation in continuation of the third anga called Thanamga. Both the angas follow the numerical method of presenting their subject-matters as in the Pali Anguttura or Ekuttara Nikaya. The Thanamga agrees more closely with the Anguttara Nikaya in so far as their numerical groupings stop at the number ten while the Samavāyamga supersedes them in going not only beyond ten but also beyond hundred and even as far as a kror and kror of krors.
The title of the sutra implies that it presents in a nutshell the contents of all the angas, the fourteen purvas and a few other texts of the canon besides the principal tenets of Jainism. In view of the fact that the sutra includes even its own contents, one cannot help doubting that the text in its extant form retains its earlier identity. The suspicion about its later transformation increases when we find that it speaks of the eighteen later developments of the Brahmi script, and enumerates the thirty-six sections of the Uttarajjhayana besides giving the contents of the Nandi sutra. It is equally important to note that the idea given of the extent of the angas is not quite the same as that of the texts in their present form. The main importance of the sutra is therefore mainly historical in so far as it throws light not only on the subjectmatters of the fourteen puvvas and the twelfth anga, which are lost beyond recovery, but also on the earlier extent of the angas forming the principal texts of the Svetambara Jain Canon. This sutra contains the enumeration of the two rasis and their sub-divisions, two types of hellish creatures, etc. It also deals with three Vedas (purisa, itthi and napumsaka), twenty-four Tirthankaras, nine Vasudevas and nine Baladevas, etc.
The Lalitavistara2 offers us a list of sixty-four alphabets which were learnt by the Bodhisatta. This list names the three main parent scripts, Brahmi, Kharoṣṭhi and Puskara
1 Ed. by Rai Dhanapat Singha, Published by the Jaina Prabhakara Press, 1890; Ed. with commentary in the Agamasamgraha, Vol. 4, Benares, 1880; with Abhayadeva's commentary by the Agamodaya Samiti, Bombay, 1918.
2 Ed. Lefmann, pp. 125-126.
