History of Canonical Literature of Jainas

Author(s): Hiralal R Kapadia, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 225

208
THE CANONICAL LITERATURE OF THE JAINAS (13) bālāvabodha, (14) pañjikā, (15) tippaņaka, (16) paryāya and (17) chāyā. Out of them the avacūri and the following are not big commentaries; but they are more or less explanatory notes.
This finishes the discussion about the commentaries of Agamas. So I shall now say a few words about those who have written supercommentaries. Kotyācārya is perhaps the 1st amongst them in case we neglect Bhāsas and Cuņnis and the extinct Tīkās. He has written a Tikā on Visesão, a com. on an Agama (and there on p. 416 he has styled this Visesão as vārtika). Thus his work is a super-com. on an Agama. In this work he has neither referred to Haribhadra Suri nor to any work of his, even when he had a chance to do so on pp. 142, 237 and 876. So Anandasāgara Sūri infers that either Kotyācārya must be his predecessor or his contemporary. On pp. 978-980 there is an exposition of jñāna-naya and kriya-naya, and it tallies with one occurring in Haribhadra Sūri's com. (pp. 4886-490a) on Avassaya. This coincidence may be due to both of them borrowing from Jinabhata's com. on Avassaya. Kotyācārya has referred to the Mülatīkā of Avassaya in several places e. g. pp. 609, 674, 675, 793, 846 and 855, and this Mūlatīkā appears to be none else than that of Jinabhata whom he even mentions. Kotyācārya has hardly mentioned the name of Jinabhadra Gani Ksamāśramana but has mostly referred to him by honorifics. This may be owing to his being a grandpupil or so. For, he cannot be his direct pupil as can be inferred from the following line occurring on p. 224 :
H agufu nafta... ta yering urang goed." So he may be Jinabhadra's grand-pupil or sol. He referred to as an old 1. Prof. H. D. Velankar in his Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrta and Prākrta MSS.
in the Library of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (vols. III-IV, p. 396; No. 1520) says: “According to Hemacandra, Jinabhadra himself with Kotyācārya had written a com. on his own Bhāsya. But I take this to be a slip. It may be that his view is based upon the following line quoted by him in No. 1553 from the Catalogue of Mss. at Jesalmere (p. 19):
"Prvifor T HURSY feat fichiedertaifa(at)of THE TUTO",
The full quotation is given as under at the end of a Ms. of a com. on Visesā° - the Ms. which is dated as Samvat 1491 and which is noted on p. 246 of A Descriptive Catalogue of Mss. in the Jain Bhandars at Pattan :
"सूत्रकारपरमपूज्यश्रीजिनभद्रगणिक्षमाश्रमणप्रारब्धा समर्थिता श्रीकोट्याचार्यवादिगणिमहत्तरेण श्रीविशेषावश्यक
ayşfe;"