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BHATTACHARYA: HARIBHADRA'S SADDARSANA SAMUCCAYA
we have to wait for Somatilakasüri (fourteenth century) and Gunaratna (fifteenth century) to learn the parable itself.4 Both were commenting on a verse in Haribhadra's Saḍdarsanasamuccaya (SDSam) (eighth century). S. (Somatilaka) takes the following reading:
etävän eva loko'yam yāvān indriyagocaraḥ/ bhadre vṛkapadam pasya yad vadanti bahuśrutāḥ//5
This world consists of only as much as is within the scope of the senses. What the vastly learned ones speak of (as true) is but similar to (the statement) 'Oh! Blessed one! Look at the footprint of the Wolf!'
He then explains it as follows:
For those chatter-boxes who accept the validity of inference, verbal testimony, etc. and seek to establish pleasure and pain in the forms of heaven and hell, etc. to be achieved through the agencies of virtue and vice, and never cease in their efforts, an illustration is cited: 'Oh! Blessed one! Look at the footprint of the wolf! Thus, for example, a certain person, after drawing with the movement of his own fingers, the shape of a wolf's footprint on the layer of dust made even by a very gently blowing breeze, said to his wife, who had become eager to see the footprint of a wolf, 'Oh! Blessed one! Look at the footprint of the wolf !'6
G. (Gunaratna) narrates the parable in greater detail :
Here is a traditional story. Once there was a man, his mind deeply inculcated with ideas advocated by the nastika (heterodox) doctrine. But his own wife had her mind deeply rooted in the āstika (orthodox) doctrine. Very diligently, every day, he tried to convince her with arguments set forth in his own system. But as she was not convinced, (he hit upon a plan) and thought to himself, she will be convinced by this process.' So thinking, in the later part of the night, he went out of the city along with her, and said to her; 'Oh! Blessed one! In this city there live some people who maintain that inference has validity in respect of imperceptible things, and they are held as men of great wisdom by ordinary people. But just mark their dexterity in the matter of critical judgement.'
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Then starting from the city-gate up to the junction of the four roads, on SDSam (H), on v. 81, p. 452f.
Ibid.
4.
5.
6. I have quoted the translation of S. 's and G. 's commentaries from C/L, pp. 258ff with minor changes. S. 's commentary appears there in the name of Manibhadra's, presumably following Damodar Lal Goswami's edition of SDSam (H) (Benares, 1905). However, Dalsukh Malvania in his Preface (prastāvanā) to M.K. Jain's ed. of SDSam (H) has shown that the author of Laguvṛtti was Somatilakasūri, not Manibhadra (p. 21).
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