Charpentier, Jarl: The Uttarādhyayanasūtra: the first Mūlasūtra of the Śvetāmbara Jains (Uppsala, 1922)

Introduction

43

through, one will certainly feel convinced that few, and in certain
chapters not one single verse, might not just as well have been
read in the Sutta Nipata or in some other old Buddhist text.
Perhaps the words differ somewhat, but the spirit is mainly the
same. And we might go one step further: these religious sen-
tences and moral maxims, which seem always to have been very
popular amongst the Hindus, are certainly not the sole possession
of the Jains and Buddhists; their Brahminical opponents, whom
they have sometimes deeply loathed and detested, might equally
well claim the honour of having been the authors of a great
part of this old religious and moral poetry, the only aim of
which was to inculcate the principles of meditation on the highest
things and of a life spent in chastity and friendship towards
all created beings, notwithstanding different opinions concerning
dogmatical and philosophical matters. It would certainly be as
incorrect to deny the connection between Brahminical and hetero-
dox India here as in other matters, e. g. in the question concerning
ascetic rules1 &c.

I shall not add any further remarks upon these lectures here;
what I have found especially remarkable in each one of them
will be duly treated in the commentary. I shall only say that,
while I am inclined to consider the dogmatical chapters dealt
with above as the work of one single, and probably a rather late,
author, I cannot, of course, take up the same point of view as
regards the earlier original part. Not accepting the Jain tradition
that the whole work, and consequently also these lectures, contains
the words of Mahavira himself2, one may suggest with probability
that this old poetry is not the work of any one individual author at
all, but was developed gradually in the religious community of
monks and pious laymen. To a considerable extent they consist of
stanzas of a general religious and moral content, that have been
current from time immemorial amongst the ascetic communities
of India; and Brahminical ascetics, as well as Buddhist and Jain
monks, have drawn from this inexhaustible source the main ma-
terials for their poetry, materials that were then somewhat differ-
ently worked out amongst the adherents of different creeds. This

1 Cp. Jacobi SBE. XXII, p. xxiv ff.

2 According to another well-known tradition, the whole canon draws
its origin from IRsabha, the first Tirthamkara.