Dear List members, 

In the first ajjhayaṇa of the first suyakkhaṃdha of the Jaina canonical text Āyāraṃgasutta the following passage is found: 

lajjamāṇā puḍho pāsa / ‘aṇāgarā mo’ tti ege pavayamāṇā, jamiṇaṃ virūvarūvehiṃ satthehiṃ puḍhavikammasamāraṃbheṇaṃ puḍhavisatthaṃ samāraṃbhamāṇo aṇegarūve pāṇe vihiṃsati. 

The passage is found 5 times more, with udaya, agaṇi, vaṇassati, tasakāya and vāu instead of puḍhavi. Furthermore, there are variant readings, to wit, plural samāraṃbhamāṇā and vihiṃsaṃti. 

In his edition Schubring has a full stop after pāsa and after pavayamāṇā. Jambūvijaya has a daṇḍa after pāsa and a comma after pavayamāṇā. 

Schubring’s translation, as rendered into English by Bollée and Soni, reads (note that pāsa is introducing the pavayamāṇā phrase here): 

Ashamed in [many] individual cases, see, ([are] some, and confess: “we are houseless ones”.) 

If one, now with tools of different kinds, through activities with acts towards the earth [water, fire, plants, animals, wind] with a tool, injures other beings of different kinds. 

Compare, or rather, contrast, Jacobi: 

See! There are men who control themselves [lajjamāṇā?], (whilst others only) pretend to be houseless, because one destroys this earth body … 

I am unsure how to deal with the construction of the first part, or more in particular how to fit in the participle lajjamāṇā. In Jacobi’s translation this participle is a sentence by itself, in that of Schubring it is somehow to be linked to the pavayamāṇā sentence, which, however, lacks a proper predicate of its own. 

I like assume that the passage means something like: people who claim to be houseless but hurt living beings should be ashamed. If so (but it is a very big IF), the function of lajjamāṇā resembles that of lajji(/e)jjaṃtu in the following Apabhraṃśa line quoted in Hemacandra’s Prākrit grammar (IV 351): lajji(/e)ṃtu vayaṃsiahu jai bhaggā gharu eṃtu “He would embarrass me in front of my friends if he came home beaten”. But with Apa. we are (are we?) far removed from the language of the Āyāra. 

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to interpret this passage? 

With kind regards, Herman