A History of Indian Literature v2.c20.s2.29
A History of Indian Literature v2.c20.s2.29
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v2.c20.s2.29
As is usual in India in the compilation of collections of texts, here also the principle followed in the compilation and arrangement of the Canon is often, not the contents, but something purely external. It is numbers which play a particularly prominent part. Thus, to correspond to the 12 Aṅgas there had to be 12 Upāṅgas,³ or texts were grouped according to the number of sections they contained. Groups of ten (Dasāo, "decades") are special favourites, and the compilers of the Canon tried all possible methods of achieving the number 10.