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VASTURÁTNAKOSA
IV Authorship and Age :
Of the seven mss. only one, namely C mentions the name of the author as Prthvīdharācārya and one, namely E mentions Vedavyāşa as the author in its Gujarati ·Tabbo’ As we have seen above Aufrecht attributes the authorship of Ratnakosa to a Jain, though he does not mention the proper name. It appears that Aufrecht was led to regard this as a Jain work on account of the mention of re-etc, at the beginning of his manuscript We have seen that four, namely A, D, F, and G, of our seven mss also begin in the Jain way. B'starts directly with the text without any mangala, C starts with sit en: and E with situazz FH, while one ms. belonging to the Oriental Institute, Baroda, not used by me being very corrupt starts with mit TÜTRY FA. Wé cannot say definitely whether sit Tan TH can be taken as a Jain or Brahmanical way of beginning
" We, however, cannot draw any conclusion about the author being a Jain or non-Jain from the way in which the mss begin, because it depends upon the religion of the scribe or the patron who got the mos. copied.
The absence of reference to the name of the author in five mss. and mention of Vedavyāsa in one make us hesitate in attributing our Ratnakośa to Prthvīdhalācārya or the authority of the ms. C. The only thing that we can do for the present is to accept him provisionally as the author of our work
The acceptance of Pithivīdharācārya as the author of Ratnakośa, however, does not help us in fixing the age of the work Aufrecht has mentioned several Prthvīdharācāryas? We do not know which one wiote the Ratnakośa given in the ms C.
Hemādri in his Caturvargacintāmani quotes Ratnakośa, at least twice, once in the Viatakhanda and second time in the Pariseşakhanda as follows ताम्वूलमुसवासयोर्लक्षणमुक्तं रत्नकोशे
महापिप्पलपत्राणि क्रमुकस्य फलानि च । शुक्तिक्षारेण सयुक्तं ताम्वूलमिति संज्ञितम् ॥
1 Aufrecht in addition to Ratnakośa has the following entries about the works
of Prthyidbarācārya – (1) gaatteita, (2) ghadlenia (3) Friends, (4) aracaqui, (5) the commentary on Mrcohakatika (6) Vaišesika Ratnakoś& and (7) 997294a9efat
