Swayambhustotra

Author(s): Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp

Page 17

Four exceptional qualities of Ācārya Samantabhadra have been mentioned: 1) poetic skill (kavitva) which made his compositions excellent in terms of profoundness of content and grandiosity of expression; 2) intellectual authority (gamakatva) because of which he was able to explore and expound deep meanings of profound religious texts; 3) debating skill (vāditva) which made him capable of reasoning out the most difficult philosophical disputes; and 4) charming eloquence (vāgmitva) that engendered admiration for his truthfulness and straightforwardness even in the minds of his adversaries.
Ācārya Samantabhadra has not only been termed a brilliant grammarian, logician and philosopher, he has been recognized as an unmatched disputant and great preacher of the Jaina doctrine. Ācārya Subhacandra in Jñānārņavaḥ has likened the poetic compositions of Svāmi Samantabhadra to the bright rays of the sun. Ācārya Jinasena, the author of Harivansapurāņa, has declared that the expositions of Ācārya Samantabhadra, the composer of Jivasiddhi and Yuktyanuśāsana, carry the same merit as the words of Lord Mahavira.
Ācārya Samantabhadra was one of the most impelling proponents of the Jaina doctrine of anekāntavāda - a philosophical system which maintains that reality has multifarious aspects and that a complete apprehension of it must necessarily take into account all these aspects. Non-appreciation of this jewel of Jainism has caused the other philosophical systems fall into the trap of one-sided, incomplete, and unsustainable dogmas that fail to explain the Truth. The words of Ācārya Samantabhadra were incontrovertible as these were guarded by the Jaina doctrine of conditional predications (syādavāda) - a system of scientific safeguards that aims at maintaining proper consistency in metaphysical thought.
The time when Acārya Samantabhadra flourished cannot be ascertained with great precision. Jugalkishore Mukhtar (1925), after due research and analysis as presented in his Preface to Ratnakarandaka-śrāvakācāra, has arrived at the conclusion that
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