1.3 What is the Dharmaparīkṣā?
1.3.1 The Dharmaparīkṣā as a religious kathā
Although the Dharmaparīkṣā in its authoritative version does not present itself as a kathā ('story') – Amitagati uses kāvya (DPA 20.90) and also śāstra (DPA praśasti) and the title designates it as parīkṣā – the text(s) tells without doubt a narrative.40 It represents an imaginative dialogue between supernatural beings (vidyādharas) in a timeless time.41 In the same style as India's best exported story, the Pañcatantra, the Dharmaparīkṣā is a frame story.42 Embedded in the main plot about the two Vidyādharas lie several shorter stories some of which themselves frame yet other substories. The bulk of the plot consists of khaṇḍakathās ('short stories'; see Warder 1972: 194) that point out moral vices in human behaviour, so that combined, the narrative can be said to be, just like the Pañcatantra, a nidarśana ('satire') which is didactic in purpose (Warder 1972: 195). Indeed, Warder places the Dhūrtākhyāna, to which the Dharmaparīkṣā is very frequently compared, under this
40Hariṣeṇa calls his work kavvu (kāvya; DPH 1.1.9) and kaha (kathā; DPH11.27.13). Manohardās calls it a bhāṣā ('vernacular rendering') and himself a kavi ('poet') and Vṛttavilāsa calls his text a campū (another categorisation of poetry). The other authors do not seem to categorise the work, but some scribes and manuscript cataloguers call it a kathā.
41 From the perspective of classical Indian literature, a narrative (kathā) is always fictitious, but within Jain literature a distinction is made between carita 'biographical' (Prakrit: cariya) and kalpita 'fictitious' (Prakrit:
kappiya). Balbir evaluates this as unique to Jainism (1994b: 225).
42 The literary device of the frame story is a prominent feature of pre-modern Indian literature. The Mahābhārata exemplifies a fully developed form of the device, but precursory forms of the frame story are already found in Vedic literature (see Witzel 1987).
category, more specifically he calls it a satirical nidarśana (1972: 195).43 To this category of narrative also belongs the mugdhakathā, or story about folly. This is a type of narrative found across cultures (see Thompson 1885-1976: J1700-J2749), that in Indian literature goes back to the Digha Nikāya and exists in a sort of anthological form in Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara (Warder 1977: 53).44 The Dharmaparīkṣā also surfs on this particular wave of folkloristic literature, since it also contains stories of ten types of fools, the last type in fact made up of three foolish stories (so twelve in total).45The two examples of mugdhakathā that Warder provides both also occur in the Dharmaparīkṣā (1977: 53, n. 1255-1256). From this it is clear that the Dharmaparīkṣā draws on 'folklore' (cf. infra), combines this with didacticism – which was the way in which the Digha Nikāya also used these stories – and frames it then within a critique on Brahmanism from the perspective of correct Jain lay behaviour.46 That this all comes across to the modern reader as sort of bric-a-brac is not necessarily an incorrect assessment, and I believe that this characteristic of the 'text' not only shows its multiple influences, but also the possibility for it to be broken up and used in parts suitable to the specific religious (practical) context.
Because this Dharmaparīkṣā 'box of stories' is explicitly religious, we could also situate it within a different type of category, namely that of dharmakathā ('religious story'), the category that is perhaps the most important within the Jain kathā genre, which is itself extremely prominent in Jain literature.47 Such categorisation follows the differentiation of kathās as that by the Śvetāmbara author Haribhadra (eighth century) into artha-, kāma-, saṃkīrṇa-kāma-, and dharmakathā.48 The 'religious story' is typified by a plot that ends with the religious transformation of the main character – mostly liberation from the cycle of
43 In fact, whereas I do recognise the close similarities between the two 'texts', I would not call the Dharmaparīkṣā a satire. By contrast, I would still use this term for the Dhūrtākhyāna. I aim to justify in detail this argument in a future project.
Note that in her overview of Jain classifications of narrative, in discussing the parable, Balbir writes that 'Suivre le destin de […] nidarisana (sk. nidarśana) se révèle difficile car le terme, non attesté dans le Canon, est à la fois rare et indifférencié' (Balbir 1994b: 242).
44 Warder (1977: 52-54) also mentions Kṣemendra's Mūrkhākhyāyikā in his Bṛhatkathāmañjarī. The oldest collection of such foolish stories is supposed to be the anonymous Mugdhakathā which only has been preserved in a Chinese translation, titled the Po Yu King, by Guṇavṛddhi. This in turn is supposedly translated from an adaption called the Puṣpamālā by the Buddhist Saṃghasena.
45 I discuss the term 'folklore' and the Dharmaparīkṣā's relation to it under 1.3.4 in this Introduction.
46 I believe it would be worthwhile to study this premodern embeddedness of Jainism to folkloristic, or popular, culture (cf. infra) and its relation through folklore to other Indian traditions in more detail.
47 In her chapter on the different forms of the narrative genre in Jain literature Balbir writes 'La dhammakaha étant la plus importante par principe, puisqu'elle est le moyen de véhiculer les valeurs fondamentales […]' (1994b: 228).
Kragh (2013) argues on the base of his study of the catalogue of the Amer Śāstra Bhaṇḍār in Jaipur that the narrative genre in general (kathā) is dominant in the Jain tradition in terms of manuscript production.
48 This distinction goes back at least to the Daśavaikālika-niryukti (possibly second-third century CE, see Dundas 2002: 24; Balbir 1994b: 227, fn. 12).
rebirth – and is interspersed with didacticism.49 This description indeed corresponds with the Dharmaparīkṣā which ends with the second vidyādhara's commitment to the Jain vows.
The function of this kind of story is said to evoke the interiorisation of Jain values in a lay audience within a sermonic setting, and achieves this, according to Flügel, by means of 'self-referentiality' (2010: 361). On the basis of its function, Digambara texts, like their Śvetāmbara counterparts explain that the dharmakathā is of four kinds: (1) ākṣepaṇī, attracting the listener; (2) vikṣepaṇī, establishing one's own religion after characterising others; (3) saṃvedanī, inspiring detachment by pointing out the deficiencies of the body;
and (4) nirvedanī, inspiring indifference by enumerating the bitter and pleasant fruits of karman (Flügel 2010: 363).50 Applying this differentiation on the Dharmaparīkṣā, I would argue that it fits partly into all of the categories. It is ākṣepaṇī because it exposes truths by adopting different standpoints, namely those of the Brahmanical Purāṇas. It is vikṣepanī because it establishes Jainism after characterising the faulty convictions of the Brahmins. It is saṃvedaṇī because it points to the inferiority and impurity of the body – especially that of the female body in Amitagati's version (see Chapter 2). It is only partly nirvedanī because karman is not an explicit topic in the narrative, but we could understand the bad behaviour (or mithyātva) of the fools as examples of behaviour that would have an effect on one's next life.
49Didactic narrations are prevalent in the canonical texts (of the Śvetāmbaras) and are characteristic to the hermeneutical niryukti and cūrṇi corpora (see Balbir 1994b: 223).
50 This description comes from the Śvetāmbara Sthānāṅga-sūtra (4.2.246) (Flügel 2010: 363). Balbir mentions that other sources are the Sthānāṅga- and the Daśavaikālika-niryukti, and on the Digambara side the Bhagavatī-Ārādhanā and the Anagaradharmāṃrta (1994b: 228, fn. 17).
These four types are further detailed. I have taken the description of their details from Flügel (2010: 363):
Ākṣepaṇī are of four types: (1) Describing the attractive conduct of Jain mendicants and laity to the listeners; (2) Explaining the advantages and disadvantages of atonements; (3) Collecting and removing doubts; and (4) Exposing the truth by adopting different standpoints according to the listeners' abilities (Ṭhāṇa1–2 4.2.247).
Vikṣepaṇī are of four types: (1) Stating one's own doctrine, and then stating other doctrines; (2) Stating first other doctrines, and then establishing one's own doctrine, (3) Stating first the right principles, and then the wrong principles; and (4) Stating first the wrong principles, and then the right principles (Ṭhāṇa1–2 4.2.248).
Saṃvedaṇī are of four types: (1) Pointing to the worthlessness and transient nature of human life; (2) Pointing to the worthlessness and transient nature of forms of existence in other worlds (gods, hell-beings, animals, and plants); (3) Pointing to the impurity of one's own body; and (4) Pointing to the impurity of others' bodies (Ṭhāṇa1–24.2.249).
Nirvedaṇī are of four types [actually eight]: (1) Pointing to the bitter fruits in this life of bad karman acquired in this life; (2) Pointing to the bitter fruits in the next life of bad karman acquired in this life; (3) Pointing to the bitter fruits in this life of bad karman acquired in the past life; and (4) Pointing to the bitter fruits in the next life of bad karman acquired in the past life. Also, (1) Pointing to the pleasant fruits in this life of good karman acquired in this life; (2) Pointing to the pleasant fruits in the next life of good karman acquired in this life; (3) Pointing to the pleasant fruits in this life of good karman acquired in the past life; and (4) Pointing to the pleasant fruits in the next life of good karman acquired in the past life (Ṭhāṇa1–2 4.2.250).
Balbir interestingly explains how these four rhetoric strategies establish religious realisation through different (emotive) effects on the audience, such as repulsion or attraction (1994b: 228).
In order to analyse in more depth how Jain dharmakathās could effectuate their desired end, Flügel examined a specific type of 'religious story' which he calls 'conversion stories'.
These represent the motif of conversion in their plot in order to generate conversion (2010: 380). Flügel's examination is relevant to the Dharmaparīkṣā because, as I mentioned above, the Dharmaparīkṣā ends in a religious transformation.51 Although Osier does not count the transformation from lay person gone astray to committed Jain as belonging to the conversion narrative, because it is not a transformation to mendicancy (2005: 218), I would say that it does accord with how Flügel sees 'conversion' because our transformed vidyādhara recognises samyaktva.52 Flügel's analysis, and in general the categorisation of the Dharmaparīkṣā as a dharmakathā, helps to make us understand the initial function of the 'text'. We can see how the Dharmaparīkṣā could prepare a lay person to commit himself to the Jain religion as a first step, or to help a more advanced Jain to follow the vows more strictly, within a longer process of conversion (perhaps eventually leading to renunciation) (see Flügel 2010: 405-412).53 Secondly, this categorisation frames the Dharmaparīkṣā as one of the many Jain dharmakathās, demonstrating that it belonged to a prominent genre as well as illustrating how the 'text' could today still be used in sermons (see Chapter 2, fn. 77, p. 107).