Nyayavatara and Nayakarnika

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

Page 20

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"The use of Sanskrit by Jaina authors in the South was not an abnormal phenomenon; and sepecially those Teachers, who called themselves Srutakevalin, have used it with liking. The earliest author, for instance, is Umāsvāti, also called Umāsyāmi, as far as we know. Then Sākațāyana, alias Pālyakīrti, belongs to the same group, and his grammar of Sanskrit is well known. Pūjyapāda Devanandi shows close study of Pāṇini and Patañjali; and even earlier than him is Samantabhadra (whom he mentions by name) whose known workds are only in Sanskrit. Poets like Ravikīrti (who claims to have emulated Kālidāsa and Bhāravi) and Jațā-Simhanandi do presuppose cultivation of stylistic Sanskrit in the South, especially in Karņāțaka and round about, among the Jaina authors. Siddhasena could not have been an exception. On the one hand, he shows acquaintance with some of the texts of the Ardha-māgadhi canon and composed his Sanmati-tarka in Prākrit; and on the other, he has poetic abilities in handling stylistic Sanskrit as seen from some of his Stutis which have brought him eminence as a poet. It is his attachment for Sanskrit that must have attracted him to Ujjain of the Gupta period where and when Sanskrit poetry was reaching unparallelled heights in the hands of poets like Kālidāsa under royal paíronage. Siddhasena's alleged proposal to render the Ardha-māgadhī canon into Sanskrit was natural in view of the spirit of the age and his attachment for Sanskrit; but it was more than natural that it could not be accepted by the Sangha, and he had to face, as the legends go, prāyascitta.)
One of Siddhasena's Dvātrisikās, No. 11, is an eulogy of a contemporary king. Traditional tales as