Sambodhi 2014 Vol 37

Author(s): J B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 21

The Works of Vacaka Umasvati M. A. Dhaky The medieval Svetambara writes credit Umasvati to have composed some 500 works in Sanskrit', a figure doubtless seeming highly inflated from the standpoint of practically. This numerical exaggeration palpably stemmed from two consideration : first, the lofty steem in which the author was held"; second, in actuality, he may have composed a fairly large number of works, understandably though nowhere even remotely close to the phenomenally high figure '500'. Of his works, the Sabhasya-Tattvarthadhigamasutra, the Prasamaratiprakarna, and the Ksetrasamasa-better known as the Jambudvipa-samasa-are for long available and published; the first one through two different versions, the second version is sans bhasya. I am of course aware that the authorship in the first case, as also the author's sectarial affiliation are in dispute. Controversies were vehemently raised and raked on purpose - though at this distance in time they seem needless, puerile, partisan, and biased - in some quarters to assert their own convictions that were based on one hand on a few minor and surficial textual discrepancies in the text followed by the bhasya and that of the Sutra proper of the Tattvarthadhigama and on the other hand on the slight divergencies from the Tattvarthadhigama noticeable in the Prasamarati-prakarana4. The results of my detailed investigations, which have been intermittently underway for the past three decades, have convinced me that the author of all these three works in question unambiguously is Umasvati, on very firm grounds of the uniformly and unequivocally present peculiarities - style-image, linguistic habits, the tendencies reflected in the choice of words and the manner of phrasing, also strong predilection toward cataloguing (as well as using) synonyms, and very characteristic, indeed distinctive, manner of the overall composition and modulation, not to say of the discernibly