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A. M. SHASTRI
95
connection that this anecdote is not found in any work datable before the fourteenth century A.D.
The following are therefore our conclusions
(i) The contemporaneity of the śrutakevalin Bhadrabāhu and Varāhamihira contemplated by Merutunga and Rājasekharasūri must be rejected as it goes against the internal evidence of Varāhamihira's own works.
(ii) It is possible that the episode has reference to a later Bhadrabāhu who composed the niryuktis and was confused with his earlier namesake because of the sameness of their names.
(iii) An examination of the available Bhadrabāhusashitā proves that it has nothing to do with any of the personages bearing the name Bhadrabāhu and that it is inferior to and later than Varāhamihira's Brhatsaṁhitā to which it is indebted for many an idea and stanza. In fact, it is an unintelligent compilation of about the middle of the present millennium attributed to Bhadrabāhu with the object of according it a respectable position.
(iv) The text of the Bhadrabāhusamhitā as it has come down to us appears to belong to the Digambara sect of Jainism. But a critical appraisal of its contents reveals that, in all probability, the text was originally a Brāhmaṇical one and was later given a Jain appearance by adding a few Jainistic elements here and there.
(v) Although Bhadrabāhu may have composed a work on astrology, it was probably not known as Bhadrabāhusamhitā, which name is met with for the first time in the fourteenth century A.D.
(vi) As shown by a critical examination of the contents of the Prabandhacintāmaņi and Prabandhakośa, also called Caturyimsatiprabandha, their authors, Merutunga and Rājasekharasūri, had no historical sense, and the VarāhamihiraBhadrabāhu episode recorded by them must be dismissed as of po historical value whatsoever.*
*[The suggestion regarding the existence of several Bhadrabāhus is really not supported by any strong evidence.-Ed.]
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