Book Title: Jain Shwetambar Conference Herald 1915 Book 11 Jain Itihas Sahitya Ank
Author(s): Mohanlal Dalichand Desai
Publisher: Jain Shwetambar Conference
View full book text
________________
262
Shri Jaina Confertuce Herald.
between the two authors the mysterious absence of any men. tion of the former adds to the difficulty firstly it can never be supposed that the book viz. the 11 of waist should have remained unknown to the great scholar rithgare. His inde. fatiguable industry has been well known.
Secondly the 21#r being composed by a STATYTAUT ( which designation, as you know, can only be given to the knower of at least one Poorva out of fourteen ) it must have passed on as an authority at an interval of 300 years.
In fact looking to the extraordinary number of works tradi. tionally known to have been composed by Haribhadra, the weight of this ziù and the distance of time are inexplinable on any other theory than regarding them as contemporaries.
Before going to the second branch of my arguments I should like to express my surprise at one fact. Unfortunately there has not been a single author of known celebrity between the times of EITHEAT as put furth by you and me. The whole period of 300 years was enveloped in darkness, the ruling causes being auale and fearait. With the help of others I have gone through various books to collect any information but to my surprise on the close scrutiny I did not find any author worthy of mention during the great interval. In fact with regard to the production of great works of renown the period may be regarded as a dark age. Incidentally I should mention that there have been regular successions of dark ages in the history of Jain literature. This being the case I candidly admit that I have nothing to forward like direct arguments from the books of the contemporary authors except in the one case put forth above and under the circumstances I take recourse to indirect arguments showing that from the authors of the 11th century Vikrama it can be shown indirectly that Haribhadra Soori flourished good many centuries before them. That is hereafter I try to show that the spirit of the quotations by the various authors in the contemporary period (according to your contention) and its wording and force are all opposed to placing him in the 10th century as you try to show. The various quotations, I think,
