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VIDYUT AKLUJKAR
ŚABDABRAHMOLLĀSA OF UDAYAPRABHA
THE Sabdabrahmolläsa of Udayaprabha, as it is available today, consists of 47 verses which are of the nature of a stotra or hymn. Udayaprabha was a Jain Şūri of the Nāgendragaccha and a junior contemporary of Vastupāla, minister of Viradhavala of Gujarat in the 13th century A.D. (For more information on Udayaprabha, please see the New Catalogus Catalogorum and the works referred to in the bibliography.) Other works of Udayaprabha are of considerable length and contain myths, geneologies, stories current in the literature, dogmas, and moralistic fables.
The title of the work at hand is inferred from the second verse. The author mentions the titles of his other works in the body of those works (e.g. verse 17 of the Dharmābhyudaya Mahākāvya); therefore the inference regarding the title of the present work is justifiable. However, little more can be said with certainty about the nature of Sabdabrahmollāsa. Sandesara (1953:72) suggests that it may have been a treatise on the nature of grammar. This is not impossible. But one should note that in the available portion Udayaprabha does not systematically discuss any topic pertaining to the philosophy of grammar. True, in the first two verses he does employ terminology closely resembling that of philosophers of language like Bhartshari, but it is not consistently retained in the succeeding verses. Nor do
