Nyayavatara and Nayakarnika

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

Page 15

xiv
by a later Prabandha that Siddhasena came from the South, Karṇāṭaka, and his name was Bhaṭṭa Divākara. Once the Yapanīya, Samgha was as much important as Digambara and Svetambara; and its prevalence and history are primarily confined to the South, especially, Karṇāṭaka. There are ephigraphical references to this Samgha and its Teachers from the 5th to the 14th century A. D. The Darsanasara of Devasena (written in 990 of the Vikrama era) puts the origin of the Yapaniya Sangha in 205 years after the death of Vikrama and attributes it to a Svetapata. In the South the images of the Yapaniya Sangha are worshipped by Digambaras in their temples even to this day. Indranandi, however, calls them (along with the Svetambaras etc.) Jainābhāsas; and Śrutasagara is very severe against them. Gunaratna includes them among the four Samghas of Digambaras: like Digambara monks they have a peacock-feather-brush but admit Strī-mukti and Kevali-bhukti. It is not unlikely that, in earlier times, the monks of this Sangha carried the bunch of feathers of grddhra or balāka to distinguish themselves separately. The studies in this direction are not fully carried out: the regional, doctrinal and sectarian traits of this Sangha, which might be varying here and there, await further investigation. On the whole, it seems that the Yapaniya, Samgha stood midway as it were between the two, Svetambaras and Digambaras (See my paper, Yapaniya Samgha: A Jaina Sect, The Journal of the University of Bombay, I, vi, May 1933).
If one scans the references in the Amogha-vṛtti of Śaākaṭāyana on his own Sutras of his Sanskrit grammar, it is abundantly obvious that Yāpanīyas accepted the authority of texts like the Chedasutra, Niryukti etc.