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Introduction
KUNDAKUNDA'S AUTHORSHIP OF SATKHANDAGAMA-TĪKĀ DISCUSSED.--With regard to the tradition, that Padmanandi of Kundakundapura received the knowledge of twofold Siddhanta and wrote a commentary on the three sections of the Satkhanḍāgama,1 two legitimate questions can be raised: first, whether this Padmanandi of Kundakundapura is the same as our Kundakunda, and secondly, whether Padmanandi of Kundakundapura has really written a commentry on a part of the Satkhanḍāgama. The validity of the conclusion, based on this tradition, that Kundakunda cannot be earlier than 683 years after Vira, if not 770 years after Vira after assigning some years for the [p. 18:] subsequent teachers after Lohācārya, depends only on the affirmative reply of both of the above questions. The conclusion can be easily thrown overboard, if one of the two questions is denied or shown to be of a dubious character because of some other tradition going against it. A tradition, under ordinary circumstances, can be hypothetically accepted, if its genuineness or bonafides is not vitiated by the presence of some other tradtion fundamentally incongruent in details and by the presence of improbabilites and uncommon details such as some special motive behind, divine intervention, miraculous occurrences etc. that are above the comprehension of ordinary human understanding. The first part of the tradition that Indranandi is referring to our Kundakunda, I think, can be accepted; according to epigraphic records our author, as seen above, had really the name Padmanandi and he came to be called Kundakunda; and Indranandi explains the second name associating it with his native place. Second part of the tradition that Kundakunda wrote a commentary on a part of Satkhaṇḍāgama cannot be accepted without suspicion for various reasons: no such commentary attributed to Kundakunda is available today, nor have I been able to find any traces of it in Dhavala and Jayadhavala commentaries; no references, in later literature, to this commentary have been brought to light; the tradition, not being recorded in many works and very often, does not appear to have been popular; and finally, this aspect of the tradition, as recorded by Indranandi, is not accepted by Vibudha Sridhara, who, in his Śrutävatära, the fourth section of Pañcädhikara, says thus: the twofold Siddhanta was being traditionally handed down, and Kundakirti learnt the Siddhanta from the great saint Kundakundacārya and composed a sastra, Parikarma by name, extending over twelve thousand verses, on the first three sections of Satkhaṇḍāgama. Thus the toss lies between Kundakunda and Kundakirti and it cannot be easily settled with definiteness, because the tradition is not getting any substantial support from other sources. As to Kundakunda's claim, I am diffident because in the major portion of his exposition and style I find him more a narrative dogmatist than a zealous commentator; the polemic zeal of a commentator, so patent in the works of authors like Samantabhadra, Jinabhadra Kṣamasramana, Siddhasena, Pujyapada and a host of mediaeval commentators, is conspicuously absent in his works so far available. In both the traditions there is, however, one point of agreement that the composition of Satkhandagama precedes the time of Kundakunda; but even this point should not be pressed too far with regard to its
1 Śrutāvatāra, verses 160-61 etc.
2 Siddhantasärädisamgraha, p. 318, Vol. 21 of MDJG, Bombay, samvat 1979.
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