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HIS AGE, LIFE AND WORKS
XXI
preserved or known from quotations only; his list contains 88 ontrias. Great as this number is, still it would ba but a small fraction of the total of his writings if tradition might be credited, which ascribes to him the composition of 1, 400 prakaranas. This tradition is found already in our oldest sources of H.'s life (a and b), and it can be traced further back to 1068 A. D., being contained in Abhayadeva's Tikā on H.'s Pañcās'aka finished in that year. Now it is altogether incredible that the Jainas should have been so extremely careless in handing down the works of their famous author that a few centuries after his death even the titles of the great majority of them should have been forgotten, seeing that two works which he left unfinished, viz., Tattvärtha-laghuvetti and Pinda-niryukti have nevertheless been preserved. Unless, therefore, the number 1,400 be a mere hyperbole without any special meaning, we must assume that in this connection prakarana does not denote as usually & separate systematic treatise, but is used in a more restricted sense so that the Panca'saka contains 50 prakaranas, Astaka 32, Sodas'aka 16, etc., but on what principle in other cases his books were split into a great number of prakaranas it is impossible to say.
Haribhadra wrote in Sanskrit and Prākrit both in verse and in prose, mostly of course in illustration of Jaina doctrines. Two sides of his literary activity deserve special notice, his commenting on canonical works in Sanskrit, and his discussing with an intimate knowledge, the doctrines of Brahmans and Buddhists.
The old commentaries on the canonical books, the Niryuktis, Curris and old Bhāsyas were written in Prakrit throughout. As already mentioned abova p. iii) Jina. däsagani's Cūrni on the Nandisutra was finished in 677 A, D., it is, of course, written in Prakrit. Haribhadra composed a commentary on the same Sūtra, making use of the work of his predecessor; but he wrote it in Sanskrit, as well as his remaining commentaries on Sūtras. As we know of no older Sanskrit commentary on any Sūtra in S'vetämbara Literature, it is very probable that the innovation was due to Haribhadra; at least the new practice was firmly established by him, though it was further developed in the sequel. For according to Prof. Leumann (1. c. p. 582) Haribhadra commented on the text in Sanskrit but retained the kathānakas and certain other parts of the Cürni in the original Prākrit; while Silanka who flourished more thaa a century later, translates such passages also into Sanskrit.
Haribhadra is emphatically the author of prakaranas in the technical meaning of the word; a prakarana is a systematic treatise in which the subject is exposed in a scientific form, unlike the unsystematic, either diffuse or episodical, treatment of subjects in canonical books; it may be in Prākrit, but as a rule it is in Sanskrit. This way of writing originated, of course, with the Brahmans in whose literature the models of it are to be found. The first instance of it in Jaina Literature is Umāsvāti's (or Umásvămin's) Tattvārthădhigamasutra, which is claimed as their own by both S'vetămbaras and Digambaras. The early literature of the latter, who do not recognise the existent Siddhanta, consists largely in the prakaranas both in Präkrit and Sanskrit. But the first undoubtedly S'vetāmbara author of prakaranas some of whose works have come down to us, is Siddhasena-divăkara. Haribhadra, who is removed from him, as shown above p. x., by two or three generations at the utmost, raised this branch of S'votămbara Literature to a high degree of perfection. Though a few of these books of his are in Prakrit, the majority of them are in Sanskrit; they contain besides an exposition of the Jaina tenets, concise information about, and discussions or refutations of, the doctrines of opposite schools, Brahmanical and Buddhist. in this connection one of Haribhadra's works, though not a prakarana, has a peculiar interest, viz, his commentary on Dignāga's Nyāyapraves'a. Siddhasena-divākara had written a Nyāyāvatāra which unmistak.
1 Rājasekhara (1349 A. D.) assigns him 1440 pr, and four writers (between
the 15th and 18th century ) 1444 pr. see Kalyāpavijaya, l. o. p. 116 12. 2 See Professor Leumann's learned paper on Daśa yaikālikasūtra and Niryakti;
2. D. M, G., Vol 46, p. 681 ff.
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