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THE AGE OF LOGIC
together go to prove that Samantabhadra was ready with a better answer than Mallavadi to the theoretical queries of the Jainas of the time. Of course, sociohistorical circumstances too must have been playing their role, for otherwise Mallavadi supplemented by Haribhadra, if not the former alone, could have proved to be a good match for Samantabhadra and as a result the brilliant achievements of Akalanka and Vidyananda could have had a Svetambara counterpart. But that was not to be and the real progress in the field of philosophical speculation was now made in the Digambara camp and not in the Svetambara.
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Akalanka wrote a commentary not only on Aptamimāmsā but also on Tattvarthasutra and that is symptomatic. For this way Akalańka sought to meet his rivals not only on the specific ground provided by Anekantavāda but also on a more general one. But Akalanka's encounter with the Jaina systems in the course of his commentary on Tattvärthasutra was of a very superficial nature. It was rather in his independent writings mostly devoted to the epistemological problems that Akalanka seriously challenged his rivals. But even here the ensuing engagement lacked the sweep of a Mallavadi. To be sure, a new Mallavādi appeared not in the form of Akalanka but in that of Vidyananda who wrote a commentary called Tattvarthaslokavārtika on Tattvarthasutra and a sub-commentary called Aṣṭasahasri on Akalanka's commentary on Aptamimāmsā. In Aṣṭasahasri Vidyananda remained confined to the framework devised by Samantabhadra and scrupulously followed by Akalanka, but even here his examination of the rival philosophical views, as also his presentation of the corresponding Jaina views, was extremely thorough. It was, however, in Tattvarthaslokavārtika that Vidyananda so developed his argument that he could do full justice to the multifarious sides of the Jaina vs. non-Jaina duel on philosophical questions. Thus in this text he logically argued - and at length - in support of the traditional Jaina philosophical views, in support of the doctrine of Anekantavada, in support of the doctrine of pramāņas worked out by Akalanka, in each case incidentally coming out with an evaluation of various non-Jaina philosophical views. Of course, there are cases when Vidyanada's incidental reference to a non-Jaina view seems to be farfetched but even here his examination of the view referred to is as searching as elsewhere. But such cases are not very many and on the whole his references to non-Jaina views are strikingly illuminating. For instance, Vidyananda's commentary on the first aphorism of Umasvati is preceded by a long introductory discussion in the course of which the Buddhist, Sankhya and Nyaya-Vaiseṣika views on the question of the supreme religious preaching are examined in details. This part of the discussion throws interesting side-light on the historical circumstance under which the Jaina doctrine of mokşamarga was first formulated. We know that the old Agamic texts did
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