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Adelheid Mette, Poetic Style of the Oldest Mahāvīra-Eulogy
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The compound "nirvāņa-vādin” until now has not been verified in dictionaries of Sanskrit or Middle-Indian, as far as I know; the Agama Sabdakosa mentions this stanza only.
johesu ņāe jaha vīsasene pupphesu vā jaha aravinda-m āhu/ khattīna setthe jaha dantavakke isīna setthe taha Vaddhamānell 22 "As among warriors Visvaksena is the famous leader, or among flowers the lotus, they say, as the best of ksatriyas is Dantavakra, so Vardhamāna is the best of
rşis.”
dānāna settham abhaya-ppayānam saccesu vā anavajjam vayanti/ tavesu vā uttamañ bambhaceram log’uttame samane Nāyaputtell 23 "The best of gifts is providing security, or among true speech utterances, that one which does not hurt, they call (the best speech?); among religious austerities the highest is chastity, the highest in the world is the śramana Nāyaputra.”
thiīņa setthā lavasattamā vā sabhā suhammā va sabhāna setthā / nivvānaň settham jaha savvadhammā ņa nāyaputtā para-m atthi ņāņi // 24 "As the Lavasaptamas are the best of those gods who live very long, as the palace Saudharman is the best of heavenly abodes, as Nirvāna is the best in comparison with all principles, 23 so there is no wiser man than Nāyaputra."
These seven stanzas, which present a plethora of strong poetic imagery, aggregated and serially concatenated, leave no doubt as to Mahāvīra's pre-eminence in the relevant qualities, in each case praised in the fourth pāda of the respective triştubh verse. It seems that here the author tried something new, as perhaps he experimented in a poetic structure to which he was until now unaccustomed. At first sight this structure gives the impression it could be the 'priamel', a form used in other literature through ages from Homer to baroque poetic art.
The name 'priamèle' (from latin praeambulum) had been given by F.-G. Bergmann, who was the first to collect occurrences and to define this kind of rhetoric and poetic device theoretically.24 Bergmann discussed examples from didactic literature, including Indian sources, especially Bhartshari.
23 In v. 24 c the editions have nivvānasetthā (without any variant) as a predicate nominative referring to savvadhammā as the subject. My conjectura is suggested by Nāgārjuna's 'agraprajñapti': "parmi tous les dharma, le Nirvāṇa est le premier." (Trs, from the Chinese version of the Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra , k. 27, p. 260a, by Étienne Lamotte, Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse, Tome IV, Louvain 1976, p. 1754. See also below with footnote 33. 24 F.-G. Bergmann, La priamèle dans les différentes littératures anciennes et modernes. Strasbourg/Colmar 1868 and 1875. [The book was not yet accessible to me).
