Gaina Sûtras, Part I: The Âkârânga and Kalpa Sûtras — SBE Vol. 22 (trans. Hermann Jacobi, 1884)

Open to allEdited by F. Max Müller; translated by Müller, Legge, Bühler, West, Darmesteter, Palmer, Telang, Thibaut, Jolly, Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, Jacobi, Bloomfield and others261 segments · 88 pp

The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.

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The translator’s English as printed (Hermann Jacobi). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.

Rvutes For YATIS

InDEx

Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the Translations of the Sacred Books of the East

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INTRODUCTION.

THE origin and development of the Gaina sect is a subject on which some scholars still think it safe to speak with a sceptical caution, though this seems little warranted by the present state of the whole question ; for a large and ancient literature has been made accessible, and furnishes ample materials for the early history of the sect to all who are willing to collect them. Nor is the nature of these materials such as to make us distrust them. We know that the sacred books of the Gainas are old, avowedly older than the Sanskrit literature which we are accustomed to call classical. Regarding their antiquity, many of those books can vie with the oldest books of the northern Buddhists. As the latter works have successfully been used as materials for the history of Buddha and Buddhism, we can find no reason why we should distrust the sacred books of the Gainas as an authentic source of their history. If they were full of contradictory statements, or the dates contained in them would lead to contradictory conclusions, we should be justified in viewing ‘all theories based on such materials with suspicion. But the character of the Gaina literature differs little in this respect also from the Buddhistical, at least from that of the northern Buddhists. How is it then that so many writers are inclined to accord a different age and origin to the Gaina sect from what can be deduced from their own literature? The obvious reason is the similarity, real or apparent, which European scholars have discovered between Gainism and Buddhism. Two sects which have so much in common could not, it was thought,-have been independent from each other, but one sect must needs x GAINA SOTRAS.

Commentary

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Comparative§003

THE MOST DIRECT SENTENCE ABOUT METHOD IN THIS ENTIRE SERIES. Jacobi identifies the assumption his colleagues bring to Jainism — that Jainism and Buddhism resemble each other too closely to be independent, so "one sect must needs have grown out of, or branched off from the other" — and then does not merely note it. "This a priori opinion has prejudiced the discernment of many critics, and still does so. IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES I SHALL TRY TO DESTROY THIS PREJUDICE." He names a prejudice held by his own profession and makes its destruction the announced business of the introduction. He was right; nobody now argues Jainism is a Buddhist offshoot.

contrasts in method with Vinaya Texts, Part I: The Pâtimokkha and the Mahâvagga I–IV — SBE Vol. 13 (trans. Rhys Davids & Oldenberg, 1881)

Comparative§003

Which gives this shelf four positions on one question, in four volumes of a single series, and they can be laid side by side only because all four are held. Jacobi NAMES A PREJUDICE AS HIS PROFESSION'S AND SETS OUT TO DESTROY IT. Rhys Davids and Oldenberg name a borrowed frame and set it aside on evidence. Eggeling applies one — priestcraft, with Mommsen's Rome as its comparandum — with real evidential care and never names it. Palmer neither names nor examines his. Four translators, one decade, one publisher, and the whole range from the frame examined to the frame invisible.

contrasts in method with The Satapatha-Brâhmana, Part I — SBE Vol. 12 (trans. Julius Eggeling, 1882)

Historical§003

His technique for reading a devotional text as history is worth watching closely, because it neither believes nor disbelieves the source. The Jainas "would have us believe that Kundagrâma was a large town, and Siddhârtha a powerful monarch." Jacobi deflates that from their own vocabulary: Siddhârtha is repeatedly called merely Kshatriya; his wife Trisalâ "is, so far as I remember, never styled Devî, queen, but always Kshatriyânî"; the Jnâtrika Kshatriyas are never described as his dependents but as his equals. Conclusion: "Siddhârtha was no king, nor even the head of his clan," but a landowner of the recognised aristocracy. The hagiography's own word choices concede what its claims deny.

Historical§003

He uses a commentary's confusion as positive evidence, which is a move worth naming. On the epithet Vesâlie given to Mahâvîra: "The commentator explains the passage in question in two different ways, and at another place a third explanation is given. This inconsistency of opinion proves that there was no distinct tradition" — three readings from one commentator means the fact was already lost when he wrote. West makes the same move in the Pahlavi volumes, where glossary compilers who had lost a pronunciation supplied "the most obvious reading of the letters before them." Two literatures, one diagnostic: where a tradition explains something several ways, it is reconstructing rather than remembering.

shares a method with Pahlavi Texts, Part I — SBE Vol. 5 (trans. E. W. West, 1880)

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He corrects Rhys Davids by name, twice, about a volume of this same series — "Mr. Rhys Davids is also mistaken in saying in the index to his translation: 'Nâdika, near Patna'", the place being near Vesâlî, as the Mahâvagga's own narrative shows. This archive holds SBE 11, so the correction and the thing corrected are both here and a reader can settle it. Note also what the disagreement is over: an index entry. Two of the century's leading Indologists, in print, on a locality gloss.

corrects Buddhist Suttas — SBE Vol. 11 (Clarendon Press, 1881) page scans

Historical§003

And he explains success sociologically rather than doctrinally, with a disclaimer about why the genealogy matters: "We have traced the connection of Mahâvîra's family not out of mere curiosity, which indiscriminately collects all historical facts however insignificant in themselves, but for the reason that the knowledge of this connection enables us to understand how Mahâvîra came to obtain his success." Both founders came from a feudal aristocracy where "family ties are very strong and long remembered", both addressed themselves to the Kshatriyas, and both "have made use of the interest and support of their families to propagate their order." Eggeling reads Vedic ritual the same way, and never says he is doing it.

shares a method with The Satapatha-Brâhmana, Part I — SBE Vol. 12 (trans. Julius Eggeling, 1882)