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Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 95 doing so, he shows that the Atthapāhuda texts are much younger. He concludes, therefore, that the Atthapāhuda should no longer be considered a product of the classical period of Digambara literature and should not be classified as a work by Kundakunda.21 From their relative freedom from Apabhramsa forms, he takes works such as Samayasāra, Pravacanasāra, and Pañcāstikāya to belong to a genuine Kundakunda, whom, elsewhere, Schubring dates to the 2nd-3rd century C.E.22
None of this, however, brings us closer to a convincing date for the author(s) / redactor(s) of the Pravacanasāra and the Samayasāra. As Upadhye admits, 'we have to grope in darkness to settle the exact date of Kundakunda'.23
There is, however, some internal evidence as to the nature and chronology of these texts. E.H. Johnston in his study of early Sāmkhya notes in passing that:
Kundakunda's use of the terms pariņāma and paramāņu are more appropriate to a date in the neighbourhood of the third or fourth century A.D., and similarly in the Samayasāra .... 124, 127, and 356-361, he refers to the Sāmkhya doctrine of the connection between soul and prakrti in language that could hardly have been used at a much earlier date.24
My own research shows that the technical way in which the term samaya itself is used in the Samayasāra indicates a relatively late date (early fifth century or later) for that text.25 Furthermore, the way in which Kundakunda uses the two truths doctrine (vyavahāra-naya and niscaya-naya) seems much closer to Sankara's distinction than to the
21 Ibid. p. 574.
22 Schubring 1966, p. 36. Upadhye accepts the Pāhudas as genuine Kundakunda (see pp. xxvi-xxxvii), but Schubring convincingly dismisses this (1957, pp. 567-568).
23 Upadhye p. xix. 24 Johnston p. 14, fn. 1. 25 See below, p. 233ff.
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