ABSTRACT

The Bhagavatî-sûtra provides us with some valuable pieces of historical evidence to track the gradual development of the syâd-vâda. Lesson 10 of Chapter 12 of this canonical text luckily encapsulates the step-by-step expansion of the method of modal predications through its historical layers, which seem to be appended one by one at the end of the original nucleus, similar to the layer-like descriptions of, e.g., the Sâôkhya system found in the Mokša-dharma-parvan of the Mahâ-bhârata, but to a much smaller scale. The complexity of explanation and of cosmological background of the w h o l e o f Lesson 10 may also suggest that the following passage is again of slightly later origin, but probably only a little older than the four cases discussed above (Viy3 5.2 § 12, Viy3 9.33 § 108, Viy3 12.2 § 18). In the passage which follows, I translate the Prakrit form siya / siyâ (Skt. syât)396 as a third person singular optative (modal) form of the verb Öas (‘to be’), i.e. as ‘could be’, in order to avoid a regressive projection of a later concept of a clearly distinguished syât as a particle (nipâta) in the sense of the sentential functor onto early formulations. Clearly siya is used in the passage as cupola connecting the subject (e.g. âtman) with the predicate (e.g. jñâna).