Nyayavatara and Nayakarnika

Author(s): Siddhasena Divakar, Vinayvijay, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal

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colophon at the end of Dvā 19 runs thus: dveṣyaSvetapata-Siddhasenācāryasya kṛtiḥ. The colophons, thus, have no biographical value, because copyists seem to have taken liberty with them.
Then there are the Prabandhas and Kathānakas (mostly after 1200 A.D.) which give the biography of Siddhasena. They are full of inconsistencies and anachronisms; and most of the studies, so far carried out, betray the tendency of picking up likable details and explaining away, somehow or the other, the remaining ones. In the case of Haribhadra, his colophons mentioning Yakini lent some reliability to the Prabandhas which explained how he became the pupil of Yākinī. But, in the case of Siddhasena, there is hardly any such clue given by himself. His alleged defeat by Vṛddhavādi (about whose works and gifts we know nothing); his supernatural feat about the Sivalinga; his help to some kings with his miraculous powers: all this is motivated by the attempt to edify the sectarian church in a particular region. These Prabandhas and their authors have proved themselves sufficiently indifferent to the greatness of Siddhasena as a poet and as a logician. They hold him up more as a teacher gifted with supernatural or miraculous powers; and this too has the same object of edification of the church. These Prabandhas do not mention the Sanmati of Divākara. The explanation offered for this omission is that it was not in Sanskrit and that it did not contain 32 verses. As a matter of fact, the composers or compilers of Prabandhas belong to a tradition according to which Prakrit is a sacred language of the Agamas, and naturally they were expected to be more particular about a work written in Prakrit. Further, it is these Prabandhas that