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Ancient Jaina Hymns
373
have been after the death of the preceding pontiff Vijayadeva Sūri in V.S. 1713 ( or anyhow, after Vijayaprabha Sūri's investiture with the Acārya title in V.S. 1710).
Still, the word 'aindra' is not a wrong clue, if interpreted as pointing towards eventual connections of the poet with Yasovijaya. Such connections are indeed established. For it is well known that Nayavimala-Jñānavimala wrote Bālāvabodhas on two of Yaśovijaya's works, viz.,
(i) on his Sīmandhara-stavana' (V.S. 1763 )108 and (ii) on his ‘Ātha-yogadęsti-sajjhāi' (undated ).109
Muni Caturavijaya!!" has inferred from Yaśovijaya’s ‘Astapadi' and from the ‘Navapada-pūjā''ll going under the latter's name, that personal relations existed between Yaśovijaya on one side and the three philosopher poets Jñānavimala, Anandaghana and Devacandra on the other side. This is quite impossible in Devacandra's case, who was born in V.S. 1746, i.e., three years after Yaśovijaya's death ( V.S. 1734 ). Yaśovijaya may personally have known the Sage Ānandaghana, whom he celebrates eloquently in his ‘Aștapadi', and it is possible that he and our poet, who was his junior by only 14 years, did meet. Such personal acquaintance is, however, not inferable from the fact that the 'Navapada-pājā contains, besides Yaśovijaya's name, also the names of those poets : the passages composed in ‘Ulālālani Deśī and the ‘kalaśas' being marked as Devacandra's work, and the passages in 'Bhujangaprayāta' and in ‘Mālini' metre as Jñānavimala Sūri's. For, though no written account of the history of this collaboration is so far known to exist, there is an oral tradition"2, according to which this 'Pūjā' was compiled after Yaśovijaya's death in execution of a joint resolution of the representatives of the three main Śvetāmbara Gacchas, viz., our poet Jñānavimala Sūri as representative of the ‘Kharatara Gaccha', and Uttamavijaya Sūri as representative of the main line of the 'Tapā Gaccha', decreeing that a pūjā text should be created which would be palatable to followers of the three Gacchas.
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