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INTRODUCTION.
XXi
The name of the author of the commentary is not mentioned in any of the manuscripts which I have collated. In the colophon of the Bikaner Manuscript, No. 1533, above referred to, the author is stated to have been Abhavadeva Sūri, and to have written it in Samvat 1117 (= 1060 A. D.). This notice regarding the author agrees with the well-known tradition which ascribes to Abhayadeva the composition of commentaries to nine Angas (No. 3-11). See Indische Studien, vol. XVI, p. 276. The notice about the date, however, seems to be inconsistent with the date Samvat 1120 (= 1063 A. D.), given in the Berlin and Jacobi MSS. of the Dharmajñātākathā, as that of Abhayadeva's commentary on the latter Anga. See Catalogue of the Berlin Prikrit MSS., vol. II, pt. II, p. 452, Indian Antiquary, vol. XI, p. 248, and Journal of the German Oriental Society, vol. XXXIII, p. 693). For from certain remarks of Abhayadeva in his commentary on the Upāsakadashā, it would seem that he wrote it after his commentary on the Dharmajnatākathā. Thus in his references, in § 1, 2 and $ 72, to his commentary (vivarana or vylīkhya) on the latter work, he seems to imply that it was already in existence. The probability is that the date 1117 is a mislection for 1127; otherwise one would have to assume that in those references he spoke of a commentary which he, at the time, fully intended to write afterwards. The question of the authorship, however, may now be considered as settled through the discovery by Professor A. Weber (see his Catalogue of the Berlin Prakrit DISS., ibid., pp. 491
--507), that Abhayadeva, as he states himself at the end of his commentary to the nineth Anga, wrote a collective commentary to three Angas, the seventh, eighth and ninetlı (i. e., the Uvūsagadasūo, the Antagudadasho, and the Anut. tarovavõiyalasīo). This circumstance sufficiently accounts for the fact, that his name does not appear at the end of the commentary to the Uvāsagadasão, that being really the inid
