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Some Observations on
Tattvārthasūtra
DAYANAND BHARGAVA
Ācārya Umāsvāti (or Umāsvāmi according to Digambara tradition) summarized the Jaina philosophy in sūtra style in his famous work Tattvārthasūtra. In this paper we propose to make some observations on the seventh sūtra of the first chapter of Tattvārthasūtra to illustrate how Ācārya Umāsvāti utilized the material available to him.
The Importance of the Sūtra
The sūtra under reference reads like this:
nirdeśa svāmitvasādhanādhikaranasthitividhānatah, (Farrah Teraftrauifeefafaela:) 1.7.This sūtra is preceded by the sūtra pramāṇanayairadhigamah (44147 Referra:) 1.6 and is followed by satsaṁkhyāksetrasparśanakālāntarabhāvalpa- bahutvaiśca ( CTT
Y Yeral) 1.8. This means that just as pramāņa and naya are the means to acquire the knowledge of any philosophical principle, similarly nirdeśa etc. which are known as anuyogadvāra also serve the same purpose. It is intriguing to note that while the philosophical works deal with pramāna and naya in detail, they overlook these anuyogadvāras completely, even though the Āgamic literature has dealt with them in detail. In fact one of the Jaina works has the title of