A passage of the Abhidharmakosavyakhya A passage of the Abhidharmakosavyakhya

THE INDIAN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, VOL. II, NO. 2, JUNE, 1926.

NARENDRA NATH LAW pp.418-419 .

p.418 The following passage occurs in the Abhidharmako'savyaakhyaa, Bibliotheca

Buddhica ed., p. 23, ll. 22 ff.: "luhyata iti loka iti. (1) asminn eva rohita vyaayaamamaatre
kalevare loka.m praj~naapayaami lokasamudaya.m ceti suutram. (2) luhyate praluhyate
tasmaa1 loka iti ca bhagavataivoktam. luhyate vina'syatiity artha.h. lujir iha g.rhiito na
loki.h. nairuktena tu vidhaanena gakaarasya sthaane kakaara.h k.rta.h." There are here
some mistakes which have escaped the notice of the editors, Professors Li and
Stcherbatsky. Professor Poussin, too, seems to have overlooked some of these mistakes as
he has quoted the sentences, marked (1) and (2) in his French translation of the above
work (part I, p. 14) with the same mistakes and without any remark thereon. One may,
therefore, be allowed;to point them out in the following few lines. In our Visvabharati
Library we have a transcription of the Abhidharmako'savyaakhyaa made from a Ms. in
the Darbar Library, Nepal, which was secured through the kindness of the Mahaa- p.419
raajaadhiraajaa himself. The readings found herein are identical with those in the printed
text except for one single instance which will be noted in its proper place. There are,
however, a few corrections which are made only arbitrarily as will be shown presently.
The first point to be noted is the words luhyate and praluhyate which occur over and over
again. These are afterwards corrected to lukyate and pralukyarte respectively by, we do
not know, whom without any authority in the transcription referred to. Now, how are they
derived? And what do they mean? Certainly they are not from luh--ruh originally
rudh 'to grow'; nor from luh--rudh 'to restrain,' v and dh becoming l and h
respectively owing to Prakritism. The fact is that the original readings here are lujyate
and pralujyate respectively, the words being derived from luj--ruj 'to break' or to be
utterly lost (vinaa'sa). It is perfectly clear from the words of Ya'somitra himself when h?
says in that connection : luhyate (wrongly for lujyate) vina'syatiity artha.h lujir iha
g.rhiito na loki.h (pp. 23-24). Luhyate (for lujyate) means 'one becomes destroyed'. Here
is luj and not luk. This is supported also by the commentary (bhaa.sya) in Tibetan
version giving the derivation of loka (Abhidharmako'sa with its bhaa.sya, Bib. Bud., p.
13, 1. 18):.hjig pas .hjig rten no. The original Sanskrit of this as preserved in the
Vyaakhyaa cannot be other than lujyata iti loka.h. Tib..hjig= Skt. vinaa'sa, and Tib. rten =
Skt. aadhaara or aa'sraya; therefore, that which is the rten or aa'sraya of.hjig or vinaa'sa
is.hjig rten=vinaa'saa'sraya (a vanishing one). See Mahaavyutpatti, CLIV, 16 "lujyata iti
loka.h." Thus there cannot be any doubt that the actual readings here are lujyate and
pralujyate, as one would expect and as actually found in the A.s.tasohasrikaa
Praj~naapaaramitaa (Bib. Ind., p, 256) quoted by Poussin himself. The Pali form lujjati in
the same connection (Sa.myutta-Nikaaya, iv, 52: "lujjati? tasmaa loko ti vuccati") leads to
the same conclusion. In the last sentence of the passage quoted above from the
Ab~idharmako'sa-vyaakhyaa, the word gakaarasya which is found also in our
transcription must be corrected to jakaarasya as evident from the above discussion. In the
sentence (I) vyaayaama is wrongly taken for vyaama 'fathom' as in our transcription and
in the A^nguttara-Nikaaya, II, 48: vyaamamatte kalevare. The word vyaayaama has here

no sense whatever. That the measure of one's kalevara (body) is one fathom is found,
perhaps for the first time, in the 'Satapatha-Braahma.na, vii, I, I, 37: vyaamamaatro vai
puru.sa.h.