OM-ARHAM

Blog in the Study-Group of OM-ARHAM.org: Researches for Prākṛt pūrva texts from Dṛṣṭivāda Sūtra which are said lost but are not lost according to Samavāyāṅga Sūtra § 148.

EXCERPT from the text of the Ṣaṭpāhuḍa or Ṣāṭbrābhṛta of Kundakunḍācārya.

Kundakunḍācārya’s text is divided into six chapters called pāhuḍas or prābhṛtas (theses?), whose several names are given in a memorial verse which the writer of the present copy puts before the beginning of the commentary (in which, as is usual, the text is imbedded), and writes in the red ink otherwise reserved for the prākṛt gāthās themselves:

I give as a specimen of the work a few gāthās from the beginning of the sixth chapter, that on mokṣā, or final deliverance:

“Glory, glory to the divine being who, destroying within himself karma (works), and leaving off every external thing, obtains that self whose essence is knowledge.”

“Having first done honour due to that divine being who lives in the full light of knowledge boundless and most excellent, who alone is pure, I sing of that perfect self which is attained by the saints.”

“That self which to know is to be a saint: which, inviolable, imperishable, incomparable, when the saint sees face to face, he obtains everlasting deliverance.”

“The organs of sense are the outer self; the thought in the heart is the inner self; that divine thing that is free from the stain of karma is the highest self.”

“He who has loosed himself from sins, and the body of sin, (the kārmaṇaśarīra) becomes a perfect and eternal one, blameless, all-knowing, pure in soul, exalted, a ‘winner of the fight’ (a Jina), all blessing and all blessed.”

“Rising to the height of that inner self and leaving off the outer self in all three ways (i.e., thought, word, and deed), he sees himself to be one with that Highest Self; this is the doctrine of the Saints (Jinendras).”

“If a man fall from his true estate, and, beguiled by the senses, love the things of this world, he will, ah foolish one ! mistake his body for his true self.”

“And as with his own body so with the bodies of wife, children, and friends, the wise man should consider well how they're lifeless things taken up for the time by the bearer.”

“But men in their folly, not considering the truth of things, look at wife and children, and know not what is self and what is not self.”

“And cleaving to the wrong doctrine, rooted in the wrong way of thinking, they grow in folly as they persist in calling their bodies themselves.”

“But the ascetic who takes no thought of the body, who is indifferent alike to pain and pleasure, who calls nothing his own, who begins nothing, (i.e., does nothing that has the seed of another life in it), who knows himself, he attains to everlasting rest.”

“He who loves the world is bound in the chain of works. He who loves it not is loosed. This is in brief the doctrine of the Jinas with regard to deliverance from spiritual bondage.”

Here ends the quote of the beginning of the sixth chapter of Ṣaṭpāhuḍa or Ṣāṭbrābhṛta by Kundakunḍācārya.