Indologica Taurinensia

Author(s): Colette Caillat, Siegfried Lienhard, Irma Piovano, Saverio Sani
Publisher: Comitato AIT

Page 4

Piotr Balcerowicz
reasons 2.' Perhaps we will never know the true name(s) of the author(s) of STP and NA, but the question of the original number of verses of NA - viz. thirty-two, precisely as the text was rendered to us – seems to have been positively answered recently 3. In the present paper I intend to add some more arguments in favour of my thesis 4 that STP and NA are works of two different Siddhasenas, and their composition is separated by at least 150 years. Following my earlier suggestions that there is no substantial reason why to maintain the identity of the authors of STP and NA, I shall keep the name of Siddhasena Divākara for the author of the Sammati-tarka-prakarana. As a matter of fact, we can not even be sure that the Saṁmati-tarkaprakaraṇa was written by a Siddhasena and we might only rely on such a late statement as that of Abhayadeva-sūri, the commentator on STP, who - in the introductory part of Tattva-bodha-vidhāyini. (TBV) - explicitly mentions the title of the work (A Prabandha called Saṁmati') and the name of its author: Siddhasena Divākara. In order to distinguish this Siddhasena from the author of the Nyāyâvatāra, I will use the name of Siddhasena Mahāmati for the author of the Nyāyâvatāra, following Haribhadra-sūri in this regard 6.
1.1. Here, I would like to draw attention to certain discrepancies in the text of STP and NA that prove, in my opinion, that these two works were written by two different people and at different times. Both the genuine title of STP (whether Saṁmati, Sammati-tarka or Saṁmati-tarka-prakarana) and the name of its author are of secondary importance.
2. UPADHYE (1971: xxiii). 3. See BALCEROWICZ (2001a: xxxvi). 4. See BALCEROWICZ (2001b).
5. TBV.1.1 (introductory part), p. 1.17-18: ...Siddhasena-Divakara - tad-upāyabhūta-Sammaty-ākhya-prakarana-karane ...
6. On the name of the author of NA see: BALCEROWICZ (2001a: xxxiv-xxxvi). See also Pt. Dalsukhbhai MALVANIA (1979: 287-288), UPADHYE (1971: xxiv) and DHAKY (1995: 44). The supposition against the common authorship of NA and STP is enforced by what UPADHYE (1971: xxiv) was right to point out: 'Haribhadra, in his Astaka, quotes the Nyāyāvatāra 2, by referring to its author as Mahāmati. Elsewhere, however Haribhadra speaks plainly about the author of the Sanmati as Divākara and Śrutakevalin.'