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THE AGE OF LOGIC
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throated support to the innovations introduced by Akalanka in the field of epistemology. Thus it will be an instructive study to compare Abhayadeva's indebtedness to his great Digambara predecessors and Vadideva's indebtedness to the same. Certainly, had Vādideva not adopted the attitude he did the subsequent Svetāmbara performance in the field of philosophical specu... lation -- which in fact means the Jaina performance in the field of philoso. phical speculation undertaken in the third stage of the age of Logic - would have been markedly poorer than it actually was. Of course, there were points - though minor-on which Vadideva differed from his Digambara pedecessors and his range of enquiry was somewhat broader than that of Prabhācandra - if not also than that of Vidyānanda -- but that is a different matter. What is being emphasised is that Vadideva placed the Ŝvetāmbara camp in the direct line of advance that was being pursued by the entire Jaina camp --- which in fact means the Digambara camp - ever since the time of Akalarka, The significance of this step becomes still clearer when we consider the achievements of Yasovijaya, the last great author belonging to the age of Logic.
Yašovijaya had thoroughly mastered the rich Svetambara philosophical heritage that stood culminated in Sanmatitikā and Syadvadaratnakara. And this means that he had at his disposal also the old treatment of the problems relating to jñāna, naya, niksepa, saptabhangi and Anekantavada, a treatment presented in the texts like Anuyogadvāra, Nandi, Āvašyakaniry. ukti, Tattvārthabhāsya, Sanmati and Višeşāvašyakabhāșya. As things stand, it was not possible for the Digambara authors to pay special attention to these old texts, and so in his treatment of philosophical problems Yašovijaya was bound to proceed beyond Vadideva who had only his Digambara predecessors to fall back upon. Certainly, a unique feature of Yašovijaya's writings is a combination of the findings of the pre-Akalanka and postAkalanka phases of Jaina philosophical speculation, for the latter bis chief source being Vadideva, Of these writings the most important are three texts devoted to the problems of Anekāntavāda, viz. Nayarahasya, Anekāntavyavastha and Nayopadesa and two texts devoted to the problems of epistemology, viz. Tarkabhāsā and Jňānabindu; also noteworthy are his commentary on Haribhadra's ŝastravartāsamuccaya and that on Vidyānanda's Aştasahasri. On the whole, however, Yašovijaya, like Akalanka, was at his best not in his commentaries on old Masters but in his independent texts. And like Vidyānanda, he was extremely well-versed in the contemporary systems of Indian philosophy. Besides he possessed a brain whose acuteness was unparallelled; (how far this was due to his devoted study of Navyanyāya is a debatable point but that he had drunk deep into the intricacies of this branch of Indian Logic is beyond doubt). All this marks Yašovijaya a higher ori.
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