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184
Ācārya Vijayaśīlacandrasuri
Jambū-jyoti
1. In his introduction to the Pancasūtra, V. M. Shah offers two views :
(1) It is composed accordingly by FERIER meaning ancient preceptors or preceptor having the name FORTH. The first meaning is more likely. It is difficult to assign individual authorship to works like this.
(2) The term fee : is unhelpful in deciding the authorship. The plural form can be used out of respect (mānārthe bahuvacanaṁ) for the author. At the same time, it is very likely that ancient authors might have composed the sūtras and Haribhadra sūri might have put them together
2. Writes K. V. Abhyankar : "The Pañcasūtra which is a small elegant treatise written by some old writer whose name has still remained unknown."
3. A. N. Upadhye categorically records : "It is not possible to talk of [an] individual authorship with regard to works like [the] Pañcasūtra. The basic contents of this book are as old as Jainism. They are a literary heirloom preserved in the memory of Jain monks.”
4. And the considered opinion of V. M. Kulkarni is :
“ 'The language of the post-canonical Jaina works is partly Prakritthe so-called Jaina Māhārāstrī—and partly Sanskrit.' (M. Winternitz). The language of the known Prakrit works of Haribhadra is Jaina Māhārāstrī whereas the present work is written in Ardhamāgadhi prose; and this prose shares quite a few peculiarities of the diction and style of the canonical works. This fact suggests that Ācārya Haribhadra was possibly not its author. It is not unlikely that the author of [the] Pañcasūtra regarded the contents of the text as the property of the entire Jain Samgha and preferred to remain anonymous. It is also suggestive of its early date of composition. How early it is difficult to say. Since Haribhadra does not know who its author was we may not be far wrong in saying that it was composed about a century or so before Ācārya Haribhadra flourished.”
The gist of the aforementioned four opinions is this : these unanimously proclaim that Ācārya Haribhadra sūri is not the author of the Pañcasūtra. Besides this, Munirāja Jambūvijaya, the editor of the dependable critical edition of the Pañcasūtra, is inclined to opine that Ācārya Haribhadra sūri
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