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षट्खंडागम की शास्त्रीय भूमिका Dhavala, its date & author
As regards thetime of the commentary Dhavala there is no uncertainty. Its author Virsena has recorded many astronomical details of the time of his composition in the ending verses. But after a careful scrutiny of the text and its contents, however, I have been able to interpret it correctly, and it yields the result that the Dhavala was completed by Virasena on the 13th day of the bright fortnight of Karttika in the year 738 of the Saka era, when Jagattunga (i.e. Govinda III of the Rashtrakuta dynasty) has abandoned the throne and Boddana Raya (Probably Amoghavarsha I) was ruling. I have worked out the astronomical details and found them correct, and the date corresponds, according to Swami Kannu Pillai'sIndian Ephemeris, to the 8th October 816 A.D., Wednesday morning.
In the ending verses of the Jayadhavala we are told that Virasena's pupil Jinasena completed that commentary in Saka 759. The Volume of 60 thousand slokas, thus, took 21 years to compose, which comes roughtly to 3000 verses per year. If we take this as the average speed at which Virasena wrote, it gives as the period between 792 and 823 A.D. for the vigorous literary activity of Virasena alone, which produced the complete Dhavala equal to 72 thousand slokas, and the first one-third of the Jayadhavala i.e. equal to 20 thousand slokas. This single man, thus, accomplished the stupendous and extraordinary task of writing philosophical prose equal to 92 thousand slokas in the course of 31 years, and he was succeeded by an equally gigantic writer Jinasena, his pupil, who wrote the 40 thousand slokas of the Jayadhavala, the beautiful little poem Parsvabhyudaya and the magnificent Sanskrit Adipurana, before he died. What a bewildering amount of literary effusion ? Literature before Virasena
The various mentions found in the Dhavala reveal to us that there was a good deal of manuscript material before Virasena, and he utilised it very judiciously and cautiously. He had to deal with various recensions of the Satras which did not always agree in their statements.
