Somnolent Stras Sriptural Cmmentary In Svetambara Jainism

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

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PAUL DUNDAS
SOMNOLENT SŪTRAS: SCRIPTURAL COMMENTARY IN
ŚVETĀMBARA JAINISM
The human body has furnished the Jains, as it has the followers of many other traditions, with a powerful metaphor by means of which the structure, status and function of various doctrinal and institutional aspects of their religion can be conveyed and understood. Most famously, the universe is depicted in Jain cosmology as a huge man' and, in similar vein, the Jain community also has been said to be like a body, with the monks constituting its head and the nuns and lay people its limbs.2 The Jain scriptural corpus too was sometimes envisaged as a man and the twelve main parts (anga) of the human body equated with the twelve principle texts (anga) of the canon.3
The sixteenth century devotional poet Anandghan, who used Gujarati as his medium, employed this last version of the metaphor in a hymn to the twenty first tīrthankara Nami in which he refers to the "doctrineman" (samaypurus), but giving the image a further interesting twist. For Anandghan, the limbs of the doctrine-man are six: the basic scriptural text (sūtra), the four classical modes of commentary upon it, called niryukti and bhāsya (written in Prākrit verse), cūrni (written in Prākrit prose, with elements of Sanskritisation) and vrtti (written in Sanskrit prose) respectively, and, lastly, experience of doctrine and practice based on participation in an authoritative teacher lineage (parampar anubhav). Whoever cuts off one of those limbs, Anandghan asserts, will receive a bad rebirth. As can be seen, the sūtra text is here not privileged by being depicted as the head or most important part of the doctrine-man and is instead understood by Anandghan as merely an equal participant in a broader and interrelated nexus involving root scripture, commentary and interpretation.
My purpose in this paper is not to pursue the ramifications of the use of body imagery in Jainism but, instead, to address the issue of how certain prominent Jain intellectuals in the medieval period viewed the nature of scriptural commentary. It should hardly be surprising, given the lengthy time-span over which Jainism developed, that there have often been differences within the religion about the relative status of scripture and its traditional explication. The non-image worshipping Svetāmbaras provide good examples of this. Lonkā (fifteenth century),
Journal of Indian Philosophy 24: 73-101, 1996. © 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.