________________
180/The Raṣṭrakūtas and Jainism
encyclopedic work, the earliest extant Digambara commentary on the Tattvärthasūtra of Umāsvāti. The other two commentaries that followed were Akalanka's Rājavārttika and the Slokavārttika of Vidyānanda (C. E. 950). In all the Jaina monasteries of Digambara sect, these three commentaries, along with Dhavala and Gommaṭasāra, comprised the basic textual material used by advanced students. For the beginners, Nemicandra's Dravyasamgraha continues to be a basic text till to-day, because, many stanzas and sūtras are pregnant with sum and substance of life.
6.7. Jaina contribution to the development of literary theories in India is voluminous. Ācārya Jinasēna-II (C. E. 825) is one of the earliest of Jaina men of letters, to speak of alankara-sāstra, science of poetics, including topics like alankāras, two margas and ten guņas (Ādipurāṇa, XVI. 115). Jinasēna interprets the terms Vāñmaya as a collective form of the three disciplines, viz., grammar, prosody and poetics (ibid. XVI-III). By that time, Anuyogadvārasūtra, Jaina canonical text (C. 5th cent. C. E.) had clearely enumerated nine kavya-rasas, poetic-sentiments, including praśānta, tranquility, substituting vṛidanaka for bhāvanaka. Thus the Jaina tradition considers prasanta as the highest value of life.
6.7.1. Ranna (C. E. 993), a Kannada author of greater merit, has alluded to thirty-six lakṣaṇas as against sixteen samskāras, keeping alive the doctrine of lakṣaṇas in tone with Bharatamuni, the legendary guru of arts.
6.7.2. In Pārsvābhyudaya kāvya, a Sanskrit poem, Acārya Jinasēna-II had employed his poetic genius in restructuring Mēghadūta of Kālidāsa. Lines of Kālidāsa breathing the spirit of vipralambha-sṛngāra, one of the nine sentiments of poetry, are transformed to yield the (pra)śānta significance. Jinasēna takes the first line of each stanza, and sometimes only the first two lines, and adding two or three
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
