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PRAVACANASARA.
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 bonafidy is not vitiated by the presence of some other tradition fundamentally incongruent in details and by the presence of improbabilities and uncommon details such as some special motive behind, divine intervention, miraculous occurances 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 Satkhandagama 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 Srutāvatāra,1 the fourth section of Pañcadhikara, says thus: the twofold Siddhanta was being traditionally handed down, and Kundakīriti learnt the Siddhanta from the great saint Kundakundacārya and composed a s'astra, Parikarma by name, extending over twelve thousand verses, on the first three sections of Satkhandagama. Thus the toss lies between Kundakunda and Kundakirti, teacher and pupil; 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 Ksamas'ramana, Siddhasena, Pujyapada and a host of medieval 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 kunda; but even this point should not be pressed too far with r chronological value, because a portion of the tradition has been p doubtful; and as to the genuineness of the antecedent links of the tra Indranandi frankly says, there is much obscurity, and Vibudha Sridhara is somewhat vague when he simply says iti paramparaya. A scrutinising search
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1 Siddhāntasūrādisamgraha, p. 318, Vol. 21 of MDJG, Bombay, samvat 1979,
2 Srutavatāra, verse 151, which runs thus
Gunadhara-Dharasenānvaya-gurvoḥ pūrvûpara-kramo' smābhiḥ | na jñāyate tad anvaya-kathakagama-muni-janābhāvāt ||
