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RELIGION AND CULTURE OF THE JAINS
that the above-mentioned dated manuscript shows that the work cannot be later than the 16th century of Vikramas while later he avers that it was composed after the 15th century of Vikrama.86 It is difficult to accept either of these views. While we need not deny that Bhadrabāhu did really compose a work on astrology, the internal evidence of the extant work, discussed above, clearly proves that it is neither based on nor is a Sanskrit version of Bhadrabāhu's work. So also the 11th-12th century date suggested by Jinavijayaji can at best be regarded as a pure surmise. The dated manuscript indicates that the work must have been in existence for some time prior to the date of its copying, Vikrama 1504. This rules. out Gopani's suggestion that it came into existence after the 15th century of Vikrama. It is not impossible that the episode of Bhadrabābu and Varāhamihira found in the Prabandhacintāmaņi and Prabandhakośa has an important bearing on the question. Although the former work is fully aware of Bhadrabāhu's mastery over astrology, it does not contain any allusion to the Bhadrabāhusaṁhitā which is first mentioned in the latter work. There is, of course, no reason to doubt that the Bhādrabāhavi Samhitā known to Rājasekharasúri was the same as the extant Bhadrabāhusaṁhitā. Can we, on this basis, conclude that the available Bhadrabāhusamhitā came into existencc sometime during the gap between the dates of these two works, i.e., between Vikrama 1361 and 1405 ?
It will be clear from the foregoing discussion that the work now known as Bhadrabāhusamhită has nothing to do with any of the Bhadrabāhus and is quite a recent compilation, and an unintelligent one at that, dating from about the middle of the present millennium. Its compiler, who was a man of ordinary calibre, ascribed it to Bhadrabāhu, evidently with the object of giving it sanctity, popularity and authoritativeness. His knowledge of Bhadrabāhu's traditional mastery of
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Ibid., author's intro., p. 6. Ibid., p. 20.
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