Letter

SR No.: 269667
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: A N Upadhye
Total Pages: 10
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 2 MB

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The importance of the Dvadasaranayacakra is two fold. First, it is a major contribution to the development of Naya doctrine in Jainism. Secondly, the material presented through this work has a special bearing for the history of Indian philosophy. The author reviews here a large number of contemporary and different systems which we put today under categories of Vedic, Samkhya, Nyaya, Vaisesika, Mimamsa, Advaita, Bauddha, Yoga and schools of grammarians, Further, we get here a number of quotations from Jaina and non-Jaina sources which have great chronological value.
A work Nayacakra by name was known from references in other works, but somehow it took time for this work to see the light of day. There are some other smaller texts bear ng this name: Mallavadi's Works, however, has to be distinguished from them. The high scholarship and the daring innovations with which Mallavadi presented his discussion made this work in a way obscure. The very approach of discussion was more of an accommodative than of polemic type; naturally, the work never gave a thrill even to the limited number of authors who had an occasion to study it here and the original text was so buried in the commentary that very few could appreciate its value. Lastly, no lucid commentary came to be written on it. The Nyayagamanusarini of Simhasuri never became popular like the Syadvadamanjari which eclipsed as it were the text on which it happens to be a commentary.
Many scholars have taken interest in this work lately; and some articles are written here and there. Muni Shri Jambuvijayaji himself has contributed some articles on Mallavadi (in the Buddhi-prakasha, Jaina Satyaprakasha, AtmanandPrakasha ). His tracing of a quotation from the Vakyapadiya of Bhartrhari in the Pra mana-samuccaya of Dinnaga is a valuable piece of research. Pt. Malavania has written an exhaustive paper on Mallavadi and his work. Dr. V. Raghavan has made a casual reference to the Dvadasaranayacakra in his Presidential address of the all-India Oriental Conference held at Srinagar. Dr. E. Frauwallner is one of those few earnest scholars in Europe who are interested in Naya; and it is in the fitness of things that he has added an Introductien to the edition of the Dvadasaranayacakra by Shri Jambuvijayaji.
In the study of comparative philosophy, chronology is the backbone of all reasonable conclusions. Further, it is to be remembered that whatever is written cannot remain confined to our partisans or followers, but it reaches the hands of all those who are interested in the subject. So, in researches, one cannot afford to be just a pleader or partisan. The method is more important than the conclusions arrived at. Now-a-days there is a tendency that Sutra manuals are taken as the beginning of the school of philosophy; but, as a matter of fact, the Sutra texts come like a culmination of the codification of the floating views which went to make up a system. Negative evidence does not prove anything. If some work does not mention any other work, this cannot be any basic evidence for further inference in chronological discussions. Then in matters of chronology opinions have no value.