Bhartrharis Familiarity With Jainism

Author(s): Jan E M Houben
Publisher: Jan E M Houben

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BHARTRHARI'S FAMILIARITY WITH JAINISM* Jan E.M. Houben, International Institute for Asian Leiden.
Studies,
In memory of my teacher
Dr. L. van Daalen
0.0 In comparison with many authors of Indian philosophical texts, Bhartphari is remarkably non-polemic. His attitude, both in the MahābhāşyaDipikā and in the Vākyapadiya, may be described not only as 'encyclopedic', in the sense that he seems to be eager to discuss all important views on a certain subject, but also as 'perspectivistic', in the sense that he seems to acknowledge that each view represents a possible and in its own theoretical context valid perspective. Different views are enumerated and contrasted, and sometimes positively or negatively reassessed, but hardly ever fully rejected.2
• Bhartphari refers to the different views in a very concise way, and for modern students of his works the precise identity of those who held the views remains often unclear. Of those (apart from grammarians, and authors of
An earlier and on some points less elaborate version of this paper was presented at the 9th World Sanskrit Conference, 9-15 January 1994, Melbourne, Australia. When working on this article, I profited a lot from my discussions with Pt. V.B. Bhagavat Shastri, Poona. I thank Prof. Dr. J. Bronkhorst, Prof. Dr. S.D. Laddu, and Mr. H. Isaacson for comments on earlier versions of the paper. I am grateful to Prof. Dr. A. Aklujkar, who kindly provided me with detailed information about some important mss. of the Väkyapadiya and the Vrtti. Thanks are also due to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for financial support to participate in a few seminars and conferences, which gave the author much appreciated opportunities to exchange ideas with scholars working in relevant fields. Finally, I am grateful to the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden, Netherlands) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), for enabling me to write this article. For this, the scholars and staff-members of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (Pune) and the University of Poona (Department of Sanskrit and Prakrit Languages, and Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit) have provided a stimulating environment.
See my article "Bharthari's Perspectivism (1): The Vịtti and Bharthari's Perspectivism in the first kända of the Vākyapadiya" (forthcoming, b) for a provisionary discussion of Bhartphari's perspectivism. I hope to discuss it in a philosophically more comprehensive way in a future article. 2 Cf. Houben, 1992: 23-24. K.A.S. Iyer speaks of Bharthari's "spirit of accommodation" (K.A.S. Iyer, Bharthari, a Study of the Vākyapadiya in the light of the ancient commentaries, Poona, 1969:75-82).
Jan E.M. Houben, Pune, March 1994 (pre-final version)
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