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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
invested with the title of 'Ācārya' under adoption of the name of
Jñānavimala Sūri’ in 1748 or ( 1749 ) by orders of the head of the Gaccha, and died in 1782 at the ripe age of 89 years. He was a prolific writer. His creations comprise a number of Rāsas, Stutis, Stavanas, Sajjhāyas and Bālāvabodhas in Gujarati, while his Saṁskệta works are commentaries on texts like the Praśnavyākaranasūtra and the Dāvānala-stuti, as well as an orginal “Srīpāla-caritra' in prose, and a ‘Praśna-dvātrimśikā-stotra'.
The 'Sarkheśvara-Pārsvanātha-stavana', published here for the first time, thus brings the number of his Sarnskrta hymns upto two. The fact that this hymn opens with the word 'aindra', naturally makes the reader think of Yaśovijaya105, the famous author and reformer, senior to our poet by a few decades, who had such a predilection for this word that he began many of his Saṁskṛta works with it. For, according to his own testimonial146, it was by repeating the first syllable of this word, 'aim', the 'mantra-bija' of Sarasvati, that this goddess bestowed her favour on him, on the bank of the Ganges, during his 12 years, stay at Benares as a student. The mystic meaning of the whole word 'aindra', which, in Tantra-śāstra, is an equivalent of 'mati', 'buddhi' 107, may also partially be responsible for Yaśovijaya's predilection for the same. One could therefore think of Yaśovijaya as the author of the present hymn, assuming 'Naya + vimala' in the last stanza to be a lapsus calami for 'Naya + vijaya', which latter is the name of Yaśovijaya's Guru, who might have been glorified by the poet in this way. The proud language and the erudition displayed therein, would be in congruence with such illustrious authorship. Yet the mentioning of 'Dhiravimala' in st. 13 leaves no doubt that its author can be nobody else but the latter's disciple Nayavimala alias Jñānavimala Sūri. Since he gives his name as 'Nayavimala', the hymn must have been composed before this name was changed to 'Jñānavimala Sūri' at his investiture with the Ācārya title in V.S. 1748-49; and since he mentions, in the same stanza, Vijayaprabha Sūri as pontiff, it must
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