Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra

Author(s): G C Tripathi, Ashokkumar Singh
Publisher: Bhogilal Laherchand Institute of Indology

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Studies in Umāsvāti
have convinced me that the author of all these three works in question unambiguously is Umāsvāti, on very firm grounds of the uniformly and unequivocally present peculiarities-style-image, linguistic habits, the tendencies reflected in the choice of words and phrasing, also the predilection for listing as well as using synonyms, and very characteristic, indeed distinctive, manner of the overall composition and modulation, not to say of the discernibly individualistic tonality and cadence.5 He, from the sectarial standpoint, was neither Śvetāmbara, nor Digambara, nor Boika/Ksapanaka of North India, not even a pontiff of the latter's probable off-shoot, the Yāpanīya of southern India. As the available evidence points out, he seems to have belonged to the pre-svetāmbara north Indian main and major stream of the Nirgrantha religion which was organized into several ganas, sākhās, and kulas (recorded in the Sthavirāvalī of the Paryusaņā-kalpa, C. AD 100–503/516) and in whose monastic discipline a single bowl and a piece of cloth (besides the rajoharana hand-broom) were permitted as monastic upakaranas to a friar who otherwise maintained nudity as a monastically practised convention within the Church of Arhat Vardhamāna.
Besides the aforenoted three works, the existence in the past of at least four other compositions of Umāsvāti is indicated or is inferable through allusions to and/or direct quotations therefrom. Moreover, these quoted verses/ sentences are absent in the Sabhāsya-Tattvārthādhigamasūtra or the Praśamarati-prakarana, but otherwise they can be, on stylistic premises, unhesitatingly stipulated as Umāsvāti's. Since considerable amount of writing of our times on the Sabhāsya-Tattvārthādhigamasūtra and on the Praśamaratiprakaraṇa 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.