Studies in Haribhadrasuri

Author(s): N M Kansara, G C Tripathi
Publisher: B L Institute of Indology

Page 19

Introduction
xvii
Pandit śīlacandravijaya Gani (now Vijaya-Shilachandra Suri) moots the problem of the authorship of the Prakrit work named Pañca-sūtra, since scholars are at variance as to its real author. Some take it to be the work of some ancient Jain preceptor or Cirantanācārya, while others regard it as the work of Haribhadra, though there is no controversy regarding the authorship of the Sanskrit commentary on it, which is unanimously accepted as the work of Haribhadra. The author of this very long paper is convinced that Haribhadra himself is the author of both the original work and the commentary on it. In his endeavour to demolish the entire structure of arguments against his thesis, put forth from time to time by veteran indologists like M. Winternitz, Prof. Kashinath V. Abhyankar, Dr. A. N. Upadhye, and Dr. V. M. Kulkarni, he has sought to marshal his argumentative guns with the powder of internal and external evidence. His main plank rests upon the three sentences at the end of Haribhadra's commentary on the Pañca-sūtra, viz., 'Pravrajyā-sūtram samāptam/ Evaṁ pañcama-sūtra-vyākhyā samāptā// Samaptam pañcsūtrakaṁ vyākhyānato “pi //‘The author of the paper draws our attention to the word ‘api' in the third sentence, since it implies that the original work along with the commentary is completed, in both these forms. The author of the original Prakrit has employed the phrase 'Samattaṁ pañca-suttam', and the Sanskrit commentator writes 'Samāptam pañca-sūtrkam ...'. The massive onslaught of arguments based on other internal and external evidences, as interpreted by the author of this paper are quite interesting and also entertaining academically, particularly so when he summons in his support the letter from Professor Madhusudan Dhaky to the effect that comprehensively it seems that the commentator and the author of the original text are one.
In the original form some of the articles were not very systematic as expected from the point of view of a compact · format consistently consigning the supporting details to the