Vijyanandsuri Swargarohan Shatabdi Granth

Author(s): Navinchandra Vijaymuni, Ramanlal C Shah, Shripal Jain
Publisher: Vijayanand Suri Sahitya Prakashan Foundation Pavagadh

Page 796

to uphold it. As the senior most monk and scholar in the gaccha, after the death of his teacher Jinasimhasuri in V.S. 1680, Samayasundara was automatically elevated to the high pedastal of Mahopadhyāya in accordance with the established practice. Harsanandana has actually hailed him as Mahopadhyāya in his gloss on the Uttaradhyayanasutra (Srisamayasundara mahopadhyaya caranas a roruhabhyam namah).
Samayasundara was a widely travelled person. In the absence of definite evidence, it is difficult to ascertain his itinerary prior to V.S. 1644. He seems to have spent this formative period of his career in the vicinity of his teachers that served to equip him tremendously for the literary spree that followed. Thereafter his writings seem to form a reliable index to his widely diffused journeys. Their religious importance apart, these visits opened new vistas to the monk who had limited notions of the land and people. He came abreast of the rich variety that characterised the different regions of the country and, in the process, picked up quite a few of the regional languages. All this combined to make him a fuller and wiser man. By virtue of his manifold attainments he came to carry considerable weight with influential people in some of the regions and had been instrumental in securing ban on animal slaughter and excess on some segments of the population. Though. as stated earlier, his travels were widely dispersed, he seemed to have chiefly concentrated on his home state Rajasthan and the neighbouring Gujrat. It was there that most of his works were composed or brought to conclusion.
Samayasundara had special fascination for Ahmedabad. He spent quite a few caturmasas there, which, as borne out by his writings composed there, were literarily highly productive. He visited Ahmedabad several times between V.S. 1687 to 1696. By 1696 (V.S.), being eighty-six, he had become a physical decrepit. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the most trying period of his life. His physical infirmities were exacerbated by severe mental agonies. While in V.S. 1686 he had to succumb to the stubbornness of his pupil Harsanandana which led to a schism in the church, the next year, when he was stationed at Ahmedabad, Gujrat was struck by a terrible famine. The famine broke out with such ferocity that the entire social and moral fabric was sapped dry. It took an extra-ordinarily heavy toll of life. Samaya sundara himself was reduced to such dire straits
Samayasundara And His Sanskrit Works
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