Aptamimansa Critique of an Authority Bhasya

Author(s): Samantbhadracharya, Akalankadev, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Jagruti Dilip Sheth Dr

Page 35

34
CRITIQUE OF AN AUTHORITY
Moreover, he wrote commentaries on the Taltvārthasūtra of Vācaka Umāsvāti and Aptamīmāṁsā of Ac. Samantabhadra. They are respectively named as Rājavārtika and Astašati.
Astašati is very important as it presents clear-cut, closely reasoned and concentrated enunciation and defence of Anekāntavāda. Here Akalanka finds opportunity to discuss fundamental philosophical views centring around the admission or otherwise of two contradictory features, e. g. existence and non-existence, oneness and separateness, permanence and transience, 'identity between cause and effect, substance and property, parts and whole' and 'difference between cause and effect, substance and property, parts and whole.' He loses no opportunity to criticise various one-sided ontological positions and defend the corresponding Jaina positions. He critically examines rival positions as actually maintained in the contemporary works of various non-Jaina schools, particularly Buddhist. He is very bitter against the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness and causeless destruction. He attacks Buddhist Vijñānavāda and Śünyavāda. Again, he strongly refutes the Buddhist logicians' theory of perception. Moreover, we find in Astašati criticism of some basic theories of Nyāya-Vaišesika, Mīmārsā and Sārkhya systems. The style is compact, exact, terse and tough.
I think that Akalanka's works were seriously studied by the nonJaina scholars in those days and there is all possibility that his arguments were profitably utilised by them against the common rivals. I feel that well known Nyāya logician Jayanta Bhatta (ninth century A. D.) had consulted Akalanka's works. He refers to and refutes some Jaina views in the ninth chapter of his famous Nyāyamañjarī. His commentator Cakradhara (10th-11th century A.D.), while commenting on Jayanta's concerned sentences, reproduces five kārikās from Akalanka's Siddhiviniscaya and explains them extensively in his own words.37 This is very important and noteworthy. One more Kashmiri pandit Bhattanārāyanakantha (10th-11th century A. D.) refers to Akalanka and his Granthatraya by name is his Vrtti on Mrgendratantra. His actual words are : sadasadvādinām arhatām ca matesu Akalarkatritaya-prabhrtisu...,38 This shows that Akalanka's works attracted the attention of non-Jaina scholars of even remote regions like Kashmir.
- Nagin J. Shah
37. Nyāyamañjari-granthibhanga by Cakradhara, Ed. Nagin J. Shah, L. D. Series No
35, 1972, pp. 212-215. 38. Mrgendratantra with Vņti, Kashmir Series No L, 1930 A. D.