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Swami Samantabhadra.
(System) With a desire to gain knowledge of the secret principles, he traveled to the south in the guise of a slave. There, learning that Kumaril Brahmana was the unparalleled scholar in this subject, he placed himself in his service and, pleasing him with his service, learned the secret principles of that philosophy. From all this statement, it clearly emerges that Dharmakirti had reached Kumaril's service before 635, and at that time Kumaril would not have been old, but would have been about 40 years old. In such a situation, Kumaril's time goes back to around 600 AD, and this is the time, as mentioned above, by Samantabhadra. In other words, it should be said that Vidyabhusanji has, in fact, declared Samantabhadra and Kumaril to be almost contemporaries. But Kumaril, in his 'Shloka Vartika', has made some sarcastic remarks on Akalankadev's 'Ashta Shati' text, taking his 'Agyapradhana Hi...' etc. sentences, as Professor K.B. Pathak informs in his essay 'Kumaril's Place in Digambar Jain Literature', and also reveals that Kumaril lived for some time after Akalanka, so the objections that Kumaril made on the sentences of Ashta Shati could not be answered by Akalanka himself, that work had to be done later by Akalanka's disciples (Vidyānanda and Prabhāchandra). The said 'Shati' text is a commentary on Samantabhadra's 'Devagam' stotra, this has already been made clear. From this, the reader can understand for himself that on a commentary made many centuries after the text of Samantabhadra, the commentator's
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6
Ashta
1 'Ashta Shati' commentary is made many centuries later, this will become clear later on.