Studies in the Bhagavati Sutra

Author(s): J C Sikdar
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

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STUDIES IN THE BHAGAWATI SUTRA
[Ch. I
As regards the style and language it is not merely a collection of dry clods of data on the above mentioned topics, but it also contains descriptive, explanatory and emotive styles with literary flourishes, colourful descriptions of persons and things, human emotions and traits depicted with the psycholo. gical background, humour and pun expressed in the language of the people in their own style.
The Acārānga Sūtra and the Sūtrakrtānga may be great in regard to their style and language as they are partly composed in Āryā metre, but the Bhs is the greatest of all the canonical works as the richest mine of varied contents dealing with different aspects of life and Nature.
Thus the Bhs occupies the highest unique position as the treasure of knowledge and truth in the Ardha-Māgadhi Canon bearing the appearance of a mosaic into which various texts have been inserted little by little and it is integrally connected with the representatives of the whole canonical works.
SECOND SECTION Inter-relation of the Bhs to other canonical works :
It is at once observable in regard to the growth of all the canonical works that none of them attained the development up to the present extent, quite independently of one another, as there are found in them well marked individual and comhined groups, the principles of which show their inter-relation.
These groups have been brought into relation with the other groups of similar characters in course of time in later age. It appears that an author has played a part to bear especially upon the Angas and the Upāngas with the aim at the unification and order of the canonical texts, as it is evidently clear from the study of many statements in reference to the redaction which contains partly the parallel references? of one text to
i Bhs, 1, 2, 22.