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INTRODUCTION Summary of Hindi Prastāvanā)
The Pramāprameya is the second philosophical treatise of Bhāvasena coming to light. We have given detailed information about the author in our introduction to his Visvatattvaprakāśa. He was a prominent teacher of the Sena-gana and flourished in the latter half of the 13th century. He wrote two books on grammar and eight on logic and metaphysics.
This book is styled as the first chapter of Siddhānta sāra. Mokşaśāstra, containing discussion about Jaina theories of valid knowledge (pramāņa). Probably the latter part of the book was devoted to the subjects of valid knowledge (prameya ) but its existence is not known. We may note here that Visvatattvaprakāśa is also styled by the author as the first chapter of a Mokşaśāstra. In a way, these two books are complimentary to each other.
We have prepared this edition from the Nāgarī transscript of a palm-leaf manuscript in Kannada characters obtained from the Jaina Maţha of Humcha through the kind co-operation of Swami DEVENDRAKĪRTIJI. The transcript was prepared by Mr. PADMANABHA SHARMA of Mysore. The MS is in a fairly good condition. The text is obscure in only one or two places.
As noted above, the book contains a discussion of the Jaina theories of valid knowledge. The author has tried to. synthesise the traditional Jaina theories with the thenavailable Buddhist and Nyāya doctrines. He divides direct knowledge ( pratyakşa) in four categories : sensation, mental.
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