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SAMAYASUNDARA AND HIS SANSKRIT WORKS
SATYA VRAT
A celebrated monk of the kharatara gaccha, an offshoot of the Svetambara branch of the Jaina faith, Samayasundara was, by all accounts, one of the most prolific writers that the Jainistic tradition has ever known. His initiation into the monastic order by Jinacandrasuri marked the beginning of what subsequently turned out to be an extremely rewarding and chequered career, though some aspects there of are shrouded in ambiguity, the profusion of sources not with standing. As affirmed by him and some of his pupils?, he was born at Sanchor in Marwar. M.D. Desai's suggestion that he was born in V.S. 1620,though smugly espoused by subsequent writers, does not stand a close scrutiny. By the time he wrote his first work, the Bhavasataka, in V.S. 1641, he had not only delved into the intricacies of the concept of Dhvani, as propounded by Mammata in his magnum opus, the Kavyaprakasa, which he sought to present concisely therein, he had also earned by then the respectable rank of gani. In view of the canonical injunction that the title was not to be bestowed on anyone unless he had been trained for about a decade, following his initiation, and the fact that Samayasundara joined
Samayasundara And His Sanskrit Works
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