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Who is the Author of the Pañca-sūtra?
133 as its author. Naturally, the author of the list took it to be anonymous (ajñāta-kartrka). Two further Mss. of the work copied the text from this one in the seventeenth century of the Vikrama Era. And, thence forward the colophone Sammattań pascasūtrakam //cha// Kytań cirantanācāryair vivrtam ca jākini-mahattarā-sūnu-śrī-haribhadrācāryaiḥ/'.68 There might have been such a colophone in other Mss., too, copied during this period, and this added to the confusion, for future.
Another point that needs clarification is that the term 'bhavaviraha' almost invariably appears in almost all works authored by our Haribhadrasūri,69 particularly those composed after the murder of his two favoured disciples. No such usage is found anywhere in the concluding portion of the Pañcasūtra, and this might have inspired to attribute to it some ancient author, of course a respectable one in that it merited the commentary by a veteran like Haribhadrasūri.
Regarding the authorship of the Pañca-sūtra, Prof. Madhusudan Dhaky writes: 'Examining this composition from the viewpoint of graceful elegance, matter and diction of the original text, it seems to me also that it is a post-canonical work, but it bears the construction of sentences, which can be called proportionally modern, taking into consideration new emotions and modern technical language compared with antiquity. Haribhadrasūri has neither referred to the name of the Sūtrakāra, none of the commentator. Thus, comprehensively it seems that the commentator and the author of the original text are one.' Thus from the evidences put forth above it appears that Haribhadrasūri himself is the author of both the Sūtra work as also its auto-commentary.
This work seems to have been composed by Haribhadrasūri in the evening of his life, as it appears to incorporate the essence of his lifelong study of the scriptures, manifests the spiritual intoxication natural to a practitioner of the mystic science. A condensation of the Yoga-drsti-samuccaya is presented
