Operation In Search of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Mumbai Circle 1

Author(s): P Piterson
Publisher: Royal Asiatic Society

Page 76

IN THE BOMBAY CIRCLE.
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and the questions with which the Scribes and Pharisees " sought to puzzle" the teacher they hated. The latter perhaps of the two presents the closer analogy; as the specific object of the one party, in this game of question and answer, is generally, as here, represented as being to confound rather than to seek instruction, The date of the composition of the text of the Praśnottaram, or
3 6 12 Catechism, is given both in a chronogram guņarasaravi, and in figures, Saṁvat 1263=A.D. 1207. The author, Dharmaghosha is said to have succeeded śrím aj Jay a si mh a sűri, who was the pupil of śrimad Aryarakshtita súri. The present
commentary was composed in the year from Vikrama udadhigraha
12
suryasâ ukhye, or Samvat 1294=A.D. 1238, by a sûri who can only have been one remove from the author of the text.
We have already, No. 12, seen mention No. 23.-The Niryaktis
made of Badrab áhu, who, according of Badrabahu.
to the pattávalls of theKharataragachchha, "composed the Upasargaharastotra, the Kalpasutra and Niryuktis on ten sastras, viz., Âvasyaka, Daśavarkalika, &c., lived forty-five years in griba, seventeen in vrata, fourteen as yogapradhâna, and died in 170 V., at the age of seventy-six."* From the present fragment of a volume containing the Niryuktis of this writer, we learn that they were commentaries on the following works-(1) the Avaśyakasútra, (2) the Dasavaikâlikasútra, (3) the Uttaradhyayanasútra, (4) the Acharangasûtra, (5) the Sukritangasútra, (6) the Daśaśrutaskandasûtra, (7) the Kalpasútra, (8) the Vyavaharasútra, (9) the Süryaprajnapti, and (10) the Rishibhâshitâni.
No. 29 is a copy of a commentary on No. 29. A copy of Hemachandra's commentary on the Jivasamâsaprakaranam by the great the Jivagam&saprakaranam, Hem ach andra. The book ends with written with his own hand.
" the abrupt statement jîvasamâsavrittih samaptâ," the commentary on the jivasama sa is finished," no author's name being given. The reason for this omission, if we may trust the colophon--and I know of no reason why we should not trust itis that we have here a venerable relic in the shape of an original copy of one of Hemachandra's works :
* Indian Antiquary, September 1882, p. 240.