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Tūrāyana Poet Bappabbatti-sari
(a) Life
The chief traditional sources giving a historical.cum-legendary account of the life and achivements of Bappabhatți are as follows :
1. Bappabhtti-kathānaka (BK.) in Prakrit from the anonymous
Prabandha-catuştaya, so far unpublished. It is being edited by Dr. R. M. Shah. The MS. is dated V.S. 1291 (i.e.
1235 A. D.). 2. Bappabhatti-süri-carita(BC.)in Prabhācandra's Prabhavakacarita,
written in V.S. 1334 (i.e. 1278 A.D.). It seems to have used the Bappabhatti-kathanaka and some other source.
Besides these two we get Bappabhatti's complete or partial account in several other later Jain works. The account given in Rāja. sekhara's Prabandhakosa (1349 A.D.) is mainly an abridged prose version of BC. Similarly the accounts found in the Prabandha-cintamani (13th cent.), Purātana.prabandha sangraha (13th cent.), Vividhatirthakalpa (1333 A.D.), Munisundara's Upadefaratnakara (first half of the 15th cent.), Subhasıla's Pancasatiprabodha-sambandha (1465 A D.) etc. derive ultimately from the first two sources. Below I give the main points of the latter.1
1. Earlier H. R. Kapadia has given in Gujarati the biographical account
of Bappabhatti in the introduction to his edition of Caturvimsatikā (1926). It is based on the Prabhāvak acarita. Praha Upadesuratnākara and Vijayalakşmi-sūri's Upadesaprāsāda. The account given in the introduction to Pandit and Utgikar's e Gaudavaha (1927) is based on the Prabandhakośa, Vividhatirthu
dara's Gathasahasri and Pradyumna-sūri's Vicarakalpa, Samayasundara's Gäthâsähasri and Prad sare-prakarana. It is summarised by N. G. Suru in the Introduction to his edition of the Gaudavaha (1975), pp. 61-66.
The short account given by A, N. Upadhye in 'Bappa Bhatti and his Tārāgana', a paper submitted to the Ujjain Session of the All India Oriental Conference (Prakrit and Jainism Section) 1971 and published in Sambodhi IV iii, 1975, pp. 67-72) is also based on these sources.
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