SuuyagaDa and its equivalent Sanskrit

Tomoyuki Hori tomoyuki.hori at WOLFSON.OXFORD.AC.UK
Wed Oct 25 17:20:51 UTC 2000


Dear list subscribers,

I read on p.38 of N.N.Bhattacharyya's "Jain Philosophy: Historical
Outline" (2nd revised edition, New Delhi, 1999, Munshiram Manoharlal) that
the Sanskrit title of the second anga of the Zvetaambara canon,
SuutrakRta, is a wrongly Sanskritised form. He does not state why he
thinks so.

I am aware that Schubring in The Doctrine of the Jainas (English
translation p.87; original German p.60) mentions attested forms such as
SuutrakRdaGga and SuddagaDa. He also questions the possibility of
rendering suuya as suutra since suutra in AMg only appears as sutta. He
then shows the possible development of suuya < suui < suuci and suggests
rather suspiciously, I think, that suucii/suuci might here mean dRSTi,
probably basing it on Monier-Williams's small entry as a lexicographical
definition: 'sight, seeing'. Personally I don't buy this suggestion
since it is difficult to read into the word dRSTi a new meaning of wrong
views or wrong opinions as usually meant by this Jain text.

I do not know whether Bhattacharyya is alluding to this passage of
Schubring or something else, but considering how widely the Sanskrit
title SuutrakRta is accepted and used both by Indian tradition and
modern Indologists, I do not know what to make of this. I am a complete
novice in this field so I would appreciate any further reference or
elucidations which I may well have missed.

All the best,
Tomo
--------------------
Tomoyuki Hori
Wolfson College, Oxford





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