________________
Who is the Author of the Pañca-sūtra?
119 not unlikely that the author of the Pañca-sūtra regarded the contents of the text as the property of the entire Jaina Samgha and preferred to remain anonymous. It is also suggestive of its early date of composition. How early, it is difficult to say. Since Haribhadra does not know who its author was, we may not be far wrong in saying that it was composed about a century or so before Ācārya Haribhadra flourished.?
The gist of the four opinions mentioned above is that these four learned scholars are unanimously quite clear in their opinion that Ācārya Haribhadrasūri is not the author of the Pañca-sūtra. Besides this, the eminent scholar Muni Jambuvijayji who has prepared a critical edition of the work is inclined to hold that Haribhadrasūri may probably be the author of the Pañca-sūtra. In spite of this, in the absence of definite proofs, he does not offer any positive view, and accepts the tradition “cirantanācārya-viracitam'. 8
Against this established tradition and opinion of the above scholars, my own view is that Haribhadrasūri himself is the author of the Pañca-sūtra. To corroborate my view, I would put forth the following internal and external evidences:
(1) At the end of the commentary on the Pañca-sūtra, there are three sentences, viz., 'Pravrajyā-phala-sūtram samāptam / Evam pañcama-sutra-vyakhyũ samāptã // Samāptam pañcasūtrakam vyākhyānato “pi //' Among these three sentences, the last one deserves special consideration. It comes from the pen of the commentator and is, therefore, written in the style 'Samāptaṁ pañca-sūtrakaṁ vyākhyānataḥ // Now, if the commentator and the author of the Pañca-sūtra were different, the sentence in question ought to have been like 'Samāptā pañcasūtra-țīkā”. But here it is rather ‘Samāptam pañca-sūtrakam vyākhyānataḥ//', with the last word 'Api' in it, which is significant. The term 'Api' implies that Pañca-sūtra has been completed in the form of commentary also. That means it has been completed in , both the forms, the work in its original Sūtra form and also in
