The History of Indian Literature c9.428

c9.428

dagger The venerable were styled *arhant* (ἄρχων), also a title bestowed upon teachers in the Bráhmaṇas. [^ddagger]: When Páṇini speaks of Bhikshu-Sútras, and gives as their authors Páráśarya and Karmanda, teaching (iv. 3. 110, 111) that their respective adherents are to be styled Páráśariṇas and Karmandinas, and (iv. 2. 80) that the Sútra of the former is called Páráśaríya, the allusion must be to Brahmanical mendicants, since these names are not mentioned in Buddhistic writings. By Wilson, too, in the second edition of his Dictionary, *karmandin* is given as 'beggar, religious mendicant, member of the fourth order.' [According to the St. Petersburg Dictionary, from Amara, ii. 7. 41, and Hemachandra, 809.] But the circumstance must not be overlooked that, according to the Calcutta scholiasts, neither of these two rules of Páṇini is explained in the Mahábháshya, and that possibly, therefore, they may not be Páṇini’s at all, but posterior to the time of Patamjali. [The ‘Páráśariṇo bhikshavaḥ,’ at least, are really mentioned in the Bháshya to iv. 2. 66; see *I. St.*, xiii. 340.]—That mendicant monks must, as a matter of fact, have been particularly numerous in Páṇini's time is apparent from the many rules he gives for the formation of words in this connection, *e.g.*, *bhiksháchara*, iii. 2. 17 ; *bhiksháka*, iii. 2. 155; *bhikshu*, iii. 2. 168 ; *bhaiksha* from *bhikshá* in the sense of *bhiksháṇám samúhas*, iv. 2. 38. Compare, in particular, also ii. 1. 70, where the formation of the name for female mendicants (*śramaṇá*, and, in the *gaṇa*, *pravrájitá*) is treated of, which can only refer to Buddhistic female mendicants. [This last rule, which gives the epithet ‘virgin’ as a special (not as an indispensable) quality of the *śramaṇá*, taken in connection with iv. 1. 127, can hardly be said to throw a very favourable light on the ‘virginity’ of the class generally; cf. Manu, viii. 363, note 330 above. The words *sarvánnína*, v. 2. 9, and *kaukkuṭika*, iv. 4. 6, likewise exhibit a very distinct Buddhistic colouring; on this see *I. St.*, v. 140 ff. On Buddhistic mendicants at the time of the Bháshya, see the data collected in *I. St.*, xiii. 340 ff.]—The entire institution of the fourth order rests essentially on the Sáṃkhya doctrine, and its extension was certainly due to a large extent to Buddhism. The red or reddish-yellow garment (*kasháyavasana*) and the tonsure (*mauṇḍya*) are the principal badges of the Buddhist *bhikshus*; see above, pp. 78, 237. On a commentary, extant in India, on a Bhikshu-Sútra, see *I. St.*, i. 470.