Indologica Taurinensia

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

Page 6

Piotr Balcerowicz
rather difficult to follow the contents of STP without any prior knowledge of Jainism. Thus, one may have an impression that NA and STP derive from alto-gether different intellectual backgrounds 8.
1.2. Any direct comparison of NA and STP is indeed an unfeasible task in view of the fact that neither the contents nor the vocabulary of NA and STP overlap. Accordingly, we cannot pinpoint a single concept of expression in order to be able to see whether it is treated in the same manner in both texts.
Even a positive answer to the question (viz. the confirmation that a given term or concept is given precisely the same meaning both in STP and NA) would neither prove the same authorship for both works nor disprove the thesis that NA and STP were written by two different authors. Such overlapping could only have a supportive-corroborative strength, but would in no way be decisive; but its corroborative strength would be directly proportional to the uniqueness and singularity of the identical treatment of a given term / concept in both works and their divergence from the whole Jaina tradition in the case of the given term/concept.
To find a concept, however, that is explicated entirely differently in both works or that rests on completely different presuppositions would, on the other hand, prove that NA and STP could not have been written by one and the same person. Indeed, there seem to be indeed some points that presuppose an entirely different conceptual frame work in NA and STP.
2. One of them is the question of the cognitive faculties (upayoga) of the living element (jīva). It is problematic what exactly the relation between the two cognitive faculties (upayoga), i.e. jñāna (cognition) and darśana (insight / conation), on the one hand, and pramāņa (cognitive criterion), on the other, was for Siddhasena Divākara in STP. Commenting on STP, Abhayadeva-sūri - against the general Jaina tradition - apparently takes upayoga to bifurcate into
8. The above issues are discussed in more detail in BALCEROWICZ (2001b: 353354).