Sambodhi 2014 Vol 37

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

Page 22

14 M. A. Dhaky SAMBODHI individualistic tonality and cadences. From the sectarial standpoint, he was neither Svetambara', nor Digambara?, nor Botika/acela-Ksapanaka of North Indias, nor even a pontiff of the latter's probable off-shoot, the Yapaniya of southern India. As all evidence points out, he seems to have belonged to the non-Svetambara north Indian main and major stream of the Nirgrantha religion which was organized into several ganas, sakhas, and kulas (recorded in the "Sthaviravali" of the Paryusana-kalpa, c.A.D. 100-503/516) and in whose monastic discipline a single bowl and a piece of cloth, (katibandhana, katipattaka) besides the rajoharana or hand-broom were permitted as monastic upakaranas to a friar who otherwise accepted nudity as a monastically practised convention (samacari) within the Church of Arhat Vardhamana'. Besides the aforenoted three available works, the existence in the past of at least four other compositions by Umasvati is indicated, or is inferable, through allusions to and/or direct quotations therefrom. Moreover, these quoted verses/sentences are absent in the Sabhasya-Tattvarthadhigamasutra or the Prasamarati-prakarana, but otherwise they, on stylistic premises, unhesitatingly can be stipulated as Umasvati's. Since considerable amount of writing of our times on the Sabhasya-Tattvarthadhigamasutra and on the Prasamarati-prakarana exist, in this paper I shall solely focus, with one exception, upon the evidence, indeed reasonably dependable, for those other compositions attributable to him but now no longer available. (1) The saucaprakarana Gandhahasti Siddhasena Gani, in his commentary (c. A.D. 750-760) on the Sabhasya-Tattvarthadhigama-sutra (c. A.D. 350) thus quotes from Umasvati's Saucaprakaranalo : "Tatha tasy-aiva bhasyakstah saucaprakarane granthah : 'Adattadanam nama parail parigrhitasya trn-ader-apy-anisrstasya grahanam steyam |'" We may also consider, in this context, a notice taken by Muni Silcandravijaya (now Acarya Vijayasilacandra suri), of a quotation figuring within the commentary (probably before A.D. 1025) of Vadivetala Santi suri (of the abbatial order Tharapadra-gaccha) on the Uttaradhyayana-sutra 12.39 ("Harikesi-adhyayana"), in the name of "Vacaka'll :