Shatkhandagama Pustak 01

Author(s): Pushpadant, Bhutbali, Hiralal Jain, Fulchandra Jain Shastri, Devkinandan, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Jain Sahityoddharak Fund Karyalay Amravati

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(ii)
of the Brihat tippana and the Prakrit Pattavali would make the composition of Satkhanḍagama fall between 614 and 653 years after Vira Nirvana. i. e. between the 1st and 2nd centuries of the Christian Era.
This inference about the period of the composition of Satkhandagama is corroborated by the account of its commentaries as given by IndraCommentaries of nandi in his Srutavatara which work I have now come to Shatkhandagama regard as authentically preserving old traditions. According to Indranandi, six commentaries were written on Satkhandagama in succession, the last being the Dhavala. The first of these commentaries was Parikarma written by Kundakunda. References to Parikarma are many and various in the Dhavala itself, and a careful examination of them has led me to believe that it was really a commentary by Kundakunda on this work. The time of Kundakunda is approximately the 2nd century A. D. and so the Shatkhanḍagama has to be assigned to a period before that. Other commentators mentioned by Indranandi are Shamakunda, Tumbulura, Samantabhadra and Bappadeva, before we come to Virasena the author of Dhavala, and we would not be far wrong in separating them each in succession by about a century, and assign them to 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th century. respectively. None of these commentaries have so far been discovered, but traces of most of them may be found in the existing literature.
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As regards the time of the commentary Dhavala there is no uncertainty. Its author Virasena has recorded many astronomical details of Dhavala, its date the time of his composition in the ending verses. But unfortunately the available text of those verses is very corrupt. 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 Dhavaia was completed by Virasena on the 13th day of the bright fortnight of Karttika in the year 738 of the Saka era, when Jagattungs (i. e. Govinda III of the Rashtrakuta dynasty) had abandoned the throne and Boddaṇa 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's Indian Ephemeris, to the 8th October 816 A. D., Wednesday morning.
In the ending verses of the Jayadhavala we are told that Virasana's pupil Jinasena completed that commentary in Saka 759. The Volume of 60 thousand slokas, thus, took 21 years to compose, which comes roughly to 3000 verses per year. If we take this as the average speed at which Virasena wrote, it gives us 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 élokas, and the first one-third of the Jayadhavala i. e. equal to 20 thousand lokas. This single man, thus, accomp lished the stupendons 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