But we can fix the date of the Gaina literature between still narrower limits by means of the metres employed in the sacred books. I am of opinion that the first book of the A/frarariga Sutra and that of the Stitrakrztdnga SOtra may be reckoned among the most ancient parts of the Siddhcinta ; the style of both works appears to me to prove the correctness of this assumption. Now a whole lesson of the Sutrakrztariga S&tra is written in the Vaitaliya metre. The same metre is used in the Dhammapadam and other sacred books of the Southern Buddhists. But the P&li verses represent an older stage in the development of the VaitcLliya than those in the Sfitrakr/t&nga, as I shall prove in a paper on the post-Vedic metres soon to be published in the Journal of the German Oriental Society. Compared with the common Vaitaliya verses of Sanskrit literature, a small number of which occur already in the Lalita Vistara, the VaitaUya of the SOtrakr/tdnga must be considered to represent an earlier form of the metre. Again, ancient Pali works seem to contain no verses in the Aryd metre ; at least there is none in the Dhammapadam, nor have I found one in other works. But both the A^&r&nga and Sutrakr/tdhga
1 It might be objected that archaic spellings are due to the influence of the knowledge of Sanskrit ; but the Gainas must always have been so well acquainted with Prakrit that they needed not any help from the Sanskrit to understand their sacred books. On he contrary, in their Sanskrit MSS. we frequently meet with words spelt like Pr&krit words. Besides, some spellings cannot be explained as Sanskriticisms, e.g. d&raga for d&raya, the Sanskrit prototype being daraka.
xlii GAINA SUTRAS.
contain each a whole lecture in Ary verses of a form which is decidedly older than, and probably the parent of the common Aryd. The latter is found in the younger parts of the Siddhclnta, in the Brahmanical literature, both in Prakrit and in Sanskrit, and in the works of the Northern Buddhists, e. g. the Lalita Vistara, &c. The form of the Trish/ubh metre in ancient Gaina works is younger than that in the Pili literature and older than that in the Lalita Vistara. Finally the great variety of artificial metres in which the greater number of the Gths in the Lalita Vistara, &c., is composed and which are wanting in the Gaina Siddhinta, seems to prove that the literary taste of the Gainas was fixed before the composition of the latter works. From all these facts we must conclude that the chronological position of the oldest parts of the Gaina literature is intermediate between the Pali literature and the composition of the Lalita Vistara. Now the Pdli Pi/akas were written in books in the time of Va#a Gdmawi, who began to reign 88 B.C. But they were in existence already some centuries before that time. Professor Max Muller sums up his discussion on that point by saying: 'We must be satisfied therefore, so far as I can see, at present with fixing the date, and the latest date, of a Buddhist canon at the time of the Second Council, 377 B.C. 1 ' Additions and alterations may have been made in the sacred texts after that time ; but as our argument is not based on a single passage, or even a part of the Dhammapada, but on the metrical laws of a variety of metres in this and other. Pcili books, the admission of alterations and additions in these books will not materially influence our conclusion, viz. that the whole of the Gaina Siddhanta was composed after the fourth century B. C.
We have seen that the oldest works in the Gaina canon
are older than the GAthAs in the Lalita Vistara. As this
work is said to have been translated into Chinese 65 A. D.,
we must place the origin of the extant Gaina literature
before the beginning of our era. If we may judge about
1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. x, p. xxxii.
INTRODUCTION. xlili
the distance in time of the questionable date from either limit by the greater or less resemblance of the oldest G^ina works in verse with such of the Southern and North- ern Buddhists as regards metrical or stylistic peculiarities, we should place the beginning of the Gaina literature nearer the time of the P&li literature, rather than that of the Northern Buddhists. This result agrees pretty well with a tradition of the *SVetmbaras. For they say 1 that after the twelve years' famine, while Bhadrabihu was the head of the church, the Afigas were brought together by the Sangha of Pi/aliputra. Now Bhadrabahu's death is placed 170 A. V. by the 5vetmbaras r and 162 A. V. by the Digambaras ; he lived~ therefore, according to the former, under ATandragupta, who is said to have ascended the throne 155 A.V. Professor Max M tiller assigns to -/Tandra- gupta the dates 315-291 B.C.; Westergaard prefers 320 B.C. as a more likely date for A" andragupta, and so does Kern 2 . However this difference matters little : the date of the collec- tion or, perhaps more correctly; the composition of the Caina canon would fall somewhere about the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century B.C. It is worth noticing, that according to the above-cited tradition, the Sangha of PA/aliputra collected the eleven Angas without the assist- ance of Bhadrabahu. As the latter is claimed by the Digambaras for one of their teachers, and as the vSvetambaras, though doing the same,still continue the list of Sthaviras from Sambhtitavi^aya, Bhadrabahu's fellow Sthavira, not from BhadrabS.hu himself, it seems to follow that the Angas, brought together by the Sangha of P&/aliputra, formed the canon of the 6Vetambaras only, not that of the whole Gaina church. In that case we should not go wrong in placing the date of the canon somewhat later, under the patriarchate of Sthfllabhadra, i. e. in the first part of the third century B. c.
If the result of our preceding inquiry deserves credit and I see no counter arguments entitling us to mistrust our conclusion the origin of the extant aina literature cannot be placed earlier than about 300 B.C., or two centuries after
1 Pariiish/a Parvan IX, 55 seqq.
8 Geschiedenis van het Buddhisine in Indie, ii, p. 266 note.
xllV 0AINA SflTRAS.
the origin of the sect. But we are not from this fact obliged to assume that the ainas in the time intermediate between their last prophet and the composition of their canon had to rely on nothing more solid than a religious and legendary tradition, never brought into a fixed form. In that case, Mr. Earth's objections to the trustworthiness of the aina tradition would, it is true, not be without ground. However, we are told by the Svet^mbaras, as well as the Digambaras, that besides the Angas, there existed other and probably older works, called Ptirvas, of which there were originally fourteen. The knowledge of these PArvas was gradually lost, till at last it became totally extinct. The tradition of the Svetambaras about the four- teen Ptirvas is this : the fourteen Purvas had been in- corporated in the twelfth Ahga, the Dr/sh/ivida, which was lost before 1000 A.v. Rut a detailed table of con- tents of it, and consequently of the Ptirvas, has survived in the fourth Anga, the Samav&yanga, and in. the Nandi Sfitra 1 . Whether the Ptirvas, contained in the Dr/sh/i- vdda, were the original ones, or, as I am inclined to believe, only abstracts of them, we cannot decide ; at all events there has been a more detailed tradition about what they contained.
Now we should as* a rule be careful in crediting any tradition about some lost book or books of great antiquity, because such a tradition is frequently invented by an author to furnish his doctrines with an authority from which they rpay be derived. But in our case, there are no grounds for suspecting the correctness of so general and old a tradition as that about the Purvas. For the Angas do not derive their authority from the Pfirvas, but are believed to be coeval with the creation of the world. As a fraud, the tradition about the Pftrvas would therefore be unin- telligible ; but accepted as truth, it well falls in with our views about the development of the aina literature. The name itself testifies to the fact that the PQrvas were superseded by a new canon, for pOrva means former,
1 See Weber, ladische Studien, XVI, p. 341 seqq.
INTRODUCTION. xlv
earlier 1 ; and it is assuredly not by accident that the know- ledge of the Pftrvas is said to have commenced to fade away at the same time when the Ahgas were collected by the Sangha of Pi/aliputra. For after Bhadrabahu, only ten out of the fourteen Ptirvas were known.
This then is the most natural interpretation we can place on the tradition about the fourteen Pflrvas^ that they were the oldest sacred books, which however were superseded by a new canon. But as regards the cause of the abolition of the old canon and the composition of a new one, we are left to conjecture, and only as such I shall give my opinion. We know that the D^z'sh/ivada, which included the fourteen POrvas, dealt chiefly with the drtshtis or philosophical opinions of the 6r : ainas and other sects. It may be thence inferred that the POrvas related controversies held between MahcLvlra and rival teachers. The title pravad a, which is added to the name of each Ptirva, seems to affirm this view. Besides, if Mahavira was not the founder of a new sect, but as I have tried to prove, the reformer of an old one, it is very likely that he should vigorously have combated the opinions of his opponents, and defended those he had accepted or improved. The founder of a religion has to establish his own system, he is not so much in danger to become a mere controversialist as a reformer. Now if the discourses of Mahavira, remembered and handed down by his disciples, were chiefly controversies, they must have lost their interest when the opponents of Mahdvira had died and the sects headed by them had become extinct. Could such contentions about philosophical questions which were no more of any practical importance, and bickerings of divines all but forgotten, though these things were of paramount interest to the contemporary world, serve as a canon for later generations who lived in thoroughly changed circum- stances ? The want of a canon suiting the condition of the
1 The Gainas explain the meaning of the word ptirva in the following way. The Tirthakara himself taught the Pftrvas to his disciples, the Gawad haras. The Ganad haras then composed the Angas. Theie is evidently some truth in this tradition, as it does not agree with the dogma of the Ahgas, being taught already by the first Ttilhakara. See Weber, Indische Sludien, XVI, p. 353.
xlvi <?AINA SUTRAS.
community must have made itself felt, and it led, in my
opinion, to the composition of a new canon and the neglect
of the old one.
Professor A. Weber 1 assigns as the probable cause of (ftie Dr/sh/ivcida being lost, that the development of the SVet&mbara sect had arrived at a point where the diversity of its tenets from those embodied in that book became too visible to be passed over. Therefore the Drzshrivclda, which contained the Pftrvas, fell into neglect. I cannot concur in Professor Weber's opinion, seeing that the Digambaras also have lost the Ptirvas, and the Angas to boot. It is not probable that the development of Gainism during the two first centuries after the Nirv4#a should have gone on at so rapid a pace that its two principal sects should have been brought to the necessity of discarding their old canon. For, as stated above, after the splitting of the church in these two sects the philosophical system of the Gainas remained stationary, since it is nearly the same with bqth sects. As regards ethics, both sects, it is true, differ more. But as the extant canon of the Svetclmbaras is not falling into neglect, though many practices enjoined in it have long since been abandoned, it is not more probable that they should have been more sensible on the same score at the time when the P&rvas formed their canon. Besides, some of the Pftrvas are said to have continued to be extant long after the time which we have assigned for the formation of the new canon. At last they disappeared, not by an intentional peglect, I presume, but because the new canon set into clearer light the Gaina doctrines, and put them forward more systematically thaiwhad been done in the controversial literature of the PClrvas.
