Hetubindu Tika

Author(s): Dharmakirti Mahaswami, Archatt Bhatt, Durvek Mishra Pandit, Sukhlal Sanghavi, Jinvijay, B Bhattacharya
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

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reading embodied in the extra leaf has closer affinities than the corres. ponding one embodied in our MS. with the Tibetan Version with which we have compared the text of the latter for the present editionwhich leads us to presume that the original Sanskrit Manuscript on which the Tibetan Version was based and from which the MS. containing the extra leaf might be copied must have been quite a different one from the present MS. The presence of the extra leaf, moreover, suggests that when the present MS. was copied in Gujrat or collected from elsewhere and treasured there, it was accompanied by another MS. And in this way perhaps a number of MSS. of the Hetubindu-līkā were prepared, distributed and preserved. This conjecture is strengthened by yet another consideration. It is this that there are long excerpts from the Hetubindu-ţikā in the treatises of the Digambara masters like Vidyānanda of the far south as also in the compositions of a number of masters of the numerous cultural centres like Patan in Gujrat. Similarly there were translated versions of the same book in Tibet on the other side of the Himalayas.1
The present MS. bears at the end the year of its writing. But unfortunately the first two figures are lost. Only the last two, viz. 75, are legible? The late Mr. C. D. Dalal has conjectured the lost digi to be 10 or 113. Accordingly the year 1075 or 1175 of the Vikrama era may be regarded as the time of the writing of the MS. The last date of writing is given to be Sunday, the 7th day of the dark fortnight of Margasira. Of the scribe's colophon one verse is lost and the other mutilated and so we cannot know anything about the scribe.
The present MS. was owned by the Pandita Abhayakumāra, The three verses of the colophon, which give this information, are more or less mutilated.
: It is beyond doubt that Pandita Abhayakumara was a Sãdhu (monk) inasmuch as along with his title Pandita which is the equivalent of Ganin it is mentioned that he belonged to the Brahmäņa-gaccha, It has not been possible to gather any further information about this Pandita Abhayakumāra of the Brahmāņa-gaccha.
The script of the MS. is Devanagari. But it represents a very old form of the eastern Devanāgarı of the Nevārı type. It was indeed a very arduous task requiring much time and labour to decipher and properly utilize the material that was available. Muni Sri Punyavijayaji, at the cost of enormous labour and patience, prepared for us a very nice and easily legible transcript on paper in Devanagari script. He offered us the transcript as a presentation copy. It has
1 Vide the section 'The Influence of the Hetubindu on Later Thought'. 2 Vide Text, p. 229. 3 Catalogue of Manuscripts at Pattan; Introduction, p. 42. 4 Vide Text, p. 229. 5 The title Brahmäņa-gaccha was derived from the name Varmāņa, a village . in Marwār.