name of each pūrva seems to affirm this view. Mahāvīra again was a reformer and as such it is very likely that he should vigorously have combated the opinions of his opponents and defended those he had accepted or improved. Now if the discourses of Mahavira were chiefly controversies they must have lost their interest when the opponents of Mahāvīra had died and the sects headed by them became extinct. The want of a canon suiting the condition of the community must have made itself felt and it led to the composition of a new canon and the neglect of the old one." But there are facts which lead us to believe otherwise. We have indicated before that the term Driṣṭivada came to be connected with the purvas afterwards and as such it cannot give us any clue to the nature of the contents of the pūrvas. Then again the word pravāda which in Jacobi's opinion affirms his view that the purvas contained controversies held by Mahavira with his opponents does not occur with the names of all the purvas but of eight only (Nos. 3-10). The word again appear to convey the simple sense of "discourse." Besides the short description of the contents of each pūrva does not help us with any indication as to whether there was anything controversial in it. On the loss of the fourteen purvas, therefore, we can still speak a word or two. The tradition that they were completely lost by the 10th century after Mahavira is not to be taken we think in its literal sense. The correct interpretation appears to be that they lost their independent entity by that time. In the process of systematisation and supplementation which took place in the history of the Jaina canonical literature after the purvas were gradually assimilated and by the 10th century of the Vira this assimilation was complete. The following facts confirm this view (1) One of the traditions noticed by Weber, maintains that Mahavira first recited to his ganadharas the contents of the purvas whereupon they in their turn brought the contents of these into the form of the angas, achāras, etc. This goes to prove that the contents of the purvas were not lost for ever but were incorporated into the present canonical literature. (2) The second purva, viz., the agrayaniya, we are told, expounded the chief things in or the essence of the eleven angas. This, therefore, indirectly supports the above tradition. The contents of all the eleven angas probably existed in a crude form in the purvas out of which they developed later on. (3) Bhadrabahu, who was the last to know all the pūrvas perfectly is said to have based his Kalpasūtra on the ninth pūrva, i. e., Pratyakhyānapravāda. Another tradition goes a step further and states that the present Kalpasūtra was not merely based on the said purva but formed the 8th chapter of it. From all these it appears that the purvas were not completely lost as has been believed hitherto but were gradually assimilated to the present canonical literature of the Jainas in course of its development. |