The fourteen pūrvas
Fourteen books of the oldest teaching, whose size the tradition gives in the ink it would take to write them: one elephant-load for the first, doubling to 8,192 for the last. All lost.
Pūrva means prior: the teaching before the aṅgas were shaped, kept inside the Dṛṣṭivāda. Their names and subjects survive: 1 Utpāda, the arising of substances and their modes; 2 Agrāyaṇīya, the measures of substances; 3 Vīryapravāda, the powers of the living and the lifeless; 4 Astināstipravāda, what is and what is not; 5 Jñānapravāda, the kinds of knowledge; 6 Satyapravāda, truth, restraint and their opposites; 7 Ātmapravāda, the self; 8 Karmapravāda, the eight karmas and their kinds; 9 Pratyākhyānapravāda, renunciations, rules and vows; 10 Vidyānupravāda, the lore of powers; 11 Avandhya, merit, demerit and their fruit; 12 Prāṇāvāya, breath and the kinds of life; 13 Kriyāviśāla, action in all its aspects; 14 Lokabindusāra, subject not recorded.
Their size is given not in padas but in ink. The first would take one elephant-load to write, the second two, the third four — doubling to 8,192 for the Lokabindusāra: 16,383 elephant-loads in all. The reckoning is the Digambara tradition's and is told among Śvetāmbaras; the atlas prints it as tradition. Whoever held all fourteen was a śrutakevalī, and Bhadrabāhu was the last; Vajra, by tradition, the last to hold ten.
On a scale that doubles, fourteen doublings is a staircase far taller than the eleven aṅgas' — the map draws it in outline, beside what survived, so the size of what was lost can be seen against the size of what was kept.
Measurements and counts
| Count | 14 |
|---|---|
| Where | the pūrvagata of the Dṛṣṭivāda |
| Size | 1 to 8,192 elephant-loads of ink, doubling |
| In all | 16,383 elephant-loads |
| Last to know all | Bhadrabāhu — tradition |
| Last to know ten | Vajra — tradition |
| Survive | none |