Nyayavatara and Nayakarnika

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

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alone are Stutis addressed to divinity, namely, Mahāvīra, and the 11th is a glorificatory address to a mighty king. The rest of the Dvā.s can be called prakaraṇas dealing with different topics, like Vāda, some or the other Darśana and lastly, some topics dealing with Jainism. The idea of putting together the sections dealing with Jainism at the end is a happy one and possibly indicates the hand of one and the same author.
As noted above, the first five Dvā.s have close agreement, both in thought and expression, with the Svayambhu-stotra of Samantabhadra, a veiled reference to whom being hinted by some scholars in I. 13. The texts of these are not always satisfactory, and no ancient commentary on them has come to light: some of them need thorough study at the hands of specialists in different Darśanas who alone can value whether Siddhasena's observations are really anterior to the basic Sūtra texts or quite later on which points scholars are not agreed. A portion of III. 16 is already quoted by Pujyapāda in his Sarvathasiddhi, and the speciality of Siddhasena referred to by him in his Jainendra Vyakaraṇa (5.1.7) is detected in Dva IX.22. Thus, like the Sanmati, some of the Dvā.s have enjoyed popularity both in the South and West (if not North) of India. The Nyāyāvatāra, as far as we know, is the earliest manual on logic composed for the benefit and training of the Jaina authors who till its time studied Nyaya possibly from other sources available to them. It is a Prakaraṇa and not a Stuti, and it is questionable whether it could have been intended to be a Dvā. Its constitution (whether it had 32 verses), its authorship by Siddhasena (the author of the Sanmati) and consequently its date have to remain open questions for a