Book Title: Nyayasiddhantadipa
Author(s): Shashadhar, Bimal Krishna Matilal
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Page 32
________________ INTRODUCTION 23 anasamuccayatīka. Sasadhara's work was just becoming popular in Western India. This also explains the fact that Gunaratna's commentary is only on four chapters from the middle of NSD, and not on the whole of NSD. There was a fourth Gunaratna, who was also an expert on Navyanyāya. Unfortunately, an account of this fourth Guậaratna is not to be found in M, D. Desai's A Concise History of Jaina Literature. This fourth Gunaratna was the author of an excellent and very eleborate commentary, Tarka-tarangini, in fact a sub-commeotary on Govardhana's Tarka-prakasikā, which is itself a commentary on Kešava Miśra's Tarka-bhașa. The text of Tarka-tarangīņi was edited by Dr. V. G. Parikh as his Ph. D. dissertation under the late professor J. S. Jetly. I have had the privilege of examining this hitherto unpublished but carefully edited text of Tarka-tarangini, which is at present, a manuscript accepted for publicațion by the L. D. Institute of Indology. According to J. S. Jetly (Introduction to the above work), this Gunaratna beloged to 17th century A. D. The Tarka-tarangini of Gunaratna abounds in references to almost all the important late (i. e., post-Gangesa) Navya-naiyāyikas such as Jayadeva Pakşadhara, Raghunatha, Bhavānanda, Haridāsa, Krşņadāsa, and Yajnapati, Almost in every page, some important post-Gangesa author was quoted. But I have been unable to locate a single reference to Saśadhara or the NSD. It is, on the face of it, improbable that if the same author had written another important commentary on a Navya-nyāya text like NSD, he should be silent about it altogether in his apparently larger work. Our Gunaratna's commentary on NSD, on the other hand, does not contain any reference to any post-Gangeśa Navya-nyāya author. In fact, it does not contain a single reference to even Gangesa. The only other Navya. nyāya author, besides Udayana, mentioned in Gunaratna's NSD-tīka, was Sundala (or Sondada) Upadhyāya. Sondala or Sondada, as we all know, was an important pre-Gangesa author whose view was contested by Gangesa in his Tattvaciniumani, It would thus be odd again to assume that a Navyanyāya author of the 17th century would be silent about Gangesa while he wrote a Navya-nyāya commentary. Besides, I have examined myself the Anyathakhya tivada section of Tarka -tarangini along with Guņaratna's NSD commentary on the Anyathakhyātivāda chapter (which is, fortunately for us, one of the four chapters commented upon by Gunaratna), and from this comparative study I am forced to conclude that these two sections on the same topic could not have been written by the same author. Thus, all the above evidence shows that 17th century Gunaratna was a different person, and that our Gunaratoa should be identified with the author of Şad-darśanasamuccaya-rikā. The NSD comme. ntary was probably the last work of the author, and that is why it was left unfinished. Jain Education International www.jainelibrary.org For Private & Personal Use Only

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