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There is of course no need to take literally Nemicandra's claim for ignorance of the tradition, stated at the end of the Dravyasamgraha. His work owes a lot to the earlier tradition represented by Umāsvāmin's Tattvārthasūtra and by Kundakunda's works. Among the latter, the Pañcāstikāya holds a special place because it treats the same topics as the Dravyasamgraha and is also written in Jaina Saurasenī Prakrit. The plans of Nemicandra's and Kundakunda's works also go along the same line, as they start with the treatment of dravyas, continue with the treatment of pādārthas and of the ratnatraya, ending with worship and meditation. At this point, Kundakunda introduces the seeds of a discussion on worship as both useful and as a possible cause of attachment, which is only to be read between the lines in the final verses of the Dravyasamgraha.
The mnemonic perspective is fundamental to the Dravyasamgraha. In its 58 verses, the author makes an extremely skilful use of the prevalent āryā metre.? In many cases, the caesura in the second line (after the third gana) corresponds to a syntactic break of the sentence and serves to emphasize contrasts and oppositions. The Dravyasamgraha is largely a work of definitions of concepts. A given concept can be defined differently from different angles. Nemicandra's presentation is often articulated around the opposition between the conventional and the absolute points of view (vyavahāra- and niscaya-naya), or around the contrast between the material and the spiritual angles (dravya and bhāva). The recurring and explicit application of this method gives a special tone to his text. Conciseness of style is another of its prominent characteristics. Like in the sūtra-style of the Tattvārtha, for instance, verbs are rare and without variety; nouns are numerous, and mostly juxtaposed, sometimes without case ending in what looks like loose compounds.
This is not the first English translation of the Dravyasamgraha, which was published as early as 1917 as the first volume of the "Sacred Books of the Jains” series by S.C. Ghosal. This pioneering book contains all that is necessary: Prakrit text, Sanskrit chāyā, English word to word translation, indexes, text of Brahmadeva's Sanskrit commentary. The translator's explanations contain a lot of valuable quotations of parallel passages which have to be consulted. The only drawback is probably the retaining of so many original terms in the translation. In order to keep with Manish Modi's concern for publishing fascicles of a modest size and price, I have kept the notes to a minimum, and refrained from the comments one could be tempted to make, reading such a suggestive masterpiece as this text.
References Editions and translations of Dravyasamgraha Dravya-Samgraha of Nemichandra Siddhânta-Chakravarttî. [English Translation with Prakrit Gâthâs
(Text) and Sanskrit Chhâyâs (renderings) and Padapātha). Ed. by S.C. Ghosal, Arrah, 1917
2 The metre of stanzas 3, 10, 15, 23-26, 33, 35-38, 40-41, 51 and 55 is gīti. The concluding stanza is a svāgata.
