Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra

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

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8 Studies in Umāsvāti
vibrant, and impressive, possessing as it also does formal terseness and subtle pithiness, just as the resulting productions are clear in meaning. However, for verses it is very largely devoid of the poetic excellences and elegances, ornamental graces and sophistications, and does not reflect the special compositional skills and refinements that more or less scintillatingly pervade through the works of the classical and post-classical Nirgrantha writers like Siddhasena Diväkara (c. first half of the fifth century AD), Harigupta Vācaka (c. AD 475-529), Mallavādi (c. AD 550600), Samantabhadra (c. AD 550-625), Mānatungacarya (c. AD 575-625), Pujyapada Devanandi (active c. AD 650-85) and the most lyrical of them all, Jaā Simhanandi (c. latter half of the seventh century AD).
Umāsvāti's main objective behind composing these prakaraṇas appears to be collecting and presenting in the most honoured medium of the time, Sanskrit, the available information on the greater part of the central Nirgrantha doctrines, dogmas, and didactic, ethical, and moral precepts relating to the ideal conduct for friars as well as lay followers, and the procedure for achieving the soteriological goal in lucid, concise, and precise language as well as in well-organized form. He also included a sketchy outline of the cosmology/cosmography as perceived and believed in the Nirgrantha religion. His works set an example, a model in systematics, which stimulated the minds of the Nirgrantha/ Jaina scholars of the age of logic and epistemology which was soon to follow. Umāsvāti's organized writings thus ushered in a movement which carried the ancient Nirgranthism toward its transformation into classical Jainism. Some of his works, incidentally, provided a mine of powerful, profound, authoritative, and quotable aphorisms for the authors of the Jaina commentaries in the post-Gupta, pre-Medieval, and Medieval times.26 In his writings, we notice the beginnings of the progressive revelations resulting from advanced thinking as well as deeper exploratory endeavours which created the scope for testing the validity as well as potentiality of the core concepts of the Nirgrantha