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Siddhasena Divākara and Vikramāditya
127
Indian Philosophy is relatively limited. It is, therefore, unsafe to state on the basis of the chance-remains available whether, in an individual case, a term or a doctrine appears in a certain work for the first tîme, or whether it represents one of the later links in the chain of Guru-paramparā lost to our view.
Thus, the question of Siddhasena's terminus a quo must be admitted to be still open.
5. The Gunavacanadvātrimśikā
It seems, however, that for its solution an expedient offers itself which has not been utilized so far by the scholars who have dealt with Siddhasena's chronology : I mean the direct evidence which the poet himself so eloquently gives in one of his works%s.
This work is the 'Guņavacanadvātrimśikā', the eleventh of those 21, or, under inclusion of the 'Nyāyāvatāra', 22 Dvātrimsikās which have survived out of Siddhasena's famous 32 Dvātrimśikās testified to have once existed%. These Dvātrimśikās, an appreciation of which is given in the Introduction to Sanmati-tarka,99 are all composed in high-flown Samskệta and in various classical metres. All, with the exception of the Gunavacanadvātrimśikā, address themselves to Mahāvīra, the last Tīrtharkara. A great part of them are in fact hymns in praise of Mahāvīra. They mostly contain refutations of heterodox philosophical systems or expositions of certain aspects of Jaina Philosophy, while some deal with the rules of disputation and controversy. In the middle of these purely spiritual or philosophical hymns stands the Gunavacanadvātrimśikā, an isolated example of secular panegyrical poetry, which, however, shares the other characteristics of its surroundings, including their polemic nature.
In this Dvātrimśikā, a royal patron is addressed, who is revealed as such a unique personality, standing out in bold relief against a back-ground of warfare, empire-building and ingenious rule that, with the help of contemporaneous literature, even a modern reader can guess who he was and thus infer when Siddhasena lived.
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