Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra

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

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The Works of Vācaka Umāsvāti 7
of the closing part of the work, Bansidhara Bhatt thus observed: Vss. 1-32 (section b) are possibly the only remainder of the complete metrical commentary on the sūtras, running parallel to the bhāsya, which is in prose throughout.'23 I largely concur with Bhatt except with one qualification that there are, within the main corpus of the printed bhāsya, quotations at several places, from a few to several verses, some of which were (with the exception of a single case) never suspected to be of Umāsvāti, because Siddhasenaganī did not comment on these. Moreover, in most of such cases, instead of placing these immediately after the bhāsya, the commentator situated them after his own commentary portion on the bhāsya, with the result that, in each instance, it looks as though it is the Siddhasenaganī who quotes these from some source! Of course, a few of the Sanskrit verses cited in the corpus of the bhāsya-īkā complex for certain were extracted from some other sources and doubtless are quotations by Siddhasenaganī, but, in several cases, the peculiar genre, expression, manner, verse, and the nuance are clearly, indeed very characteristically, of Umāsvāti. And, what is more, many of these are composed in āryā, a meter for which Umāsvāti, as earlier noted here, evinced special fondness.24
Seemingly, Umāsvāti himself had created these as a sort of sangrahanī verses in support of the bhāsya which is in prose. He was possibly following the āgamic convention of inserting the sangrahaņī-gāthās, with the difference that the composers of the latter may often be different persons or sometimes these were extracted from the floating verse collections, whereas here it is Umāsvāti himself who seems to be the author of such verses. Aside from the support of the style—which as a factor is strong enough—one other signifier is that there is as yet no evidence for a Nirgrantha author writing in Sanskrit before Umāsvāti. And, as in the āgamas so in the bhāsya, all the chapters do not contain the sangrahaņī-verses, some chapters do, some do not.25
Umāsvāti's style of versification (as well as of prose writing) is somewhat archaic, but nonetheless dynamic, forceful,