Vijyanandsuri Swargarohan Shatabdi Granth

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

Page 797

that he had to sell out his books, utensils and other articles of daily use, otherwise something abhorring for a monk to do. His misery was gravely compounded by the perfidy of his pupils who, though deeply indebted to him for their manifold attainments, deserted him when he needed them most to relieve the rigours of the old age. Samayasundara has drown a moving account of the havoc the famine spelled all aromd and the ingratitude and treachery of his disciples which even now sends shudder down to one's spine. The two combined to deal a deadly blow to him. He died in V.S. 1703 at the ripe age of ninety three, a broken man, indeed a painful antithesis to his otherwise smooth and respectable career.
Samayasundara was indeed a versatile genius. He is the sole jaina author who can be termed as the nearest approach to the legendry Hemacandra in literary output and spiritual input. The plethora of his writings in diverse languages attests to it in an ample measure. He was equally at home in grammar, poetics, prosody, linguistics, logic, astrology and canonical and ritualistic literature. While he is credited with a large number of works in Rajasthani, which compel revision of some of the notions smugly clung to so far, he made substantial contributions to sanskrit by his abundant and diversified writings. Some of his Sanskrit works can assuredly be claimed to be unparalled in the domain of literature, which combine to establish him as a mighty scholar and a gifted poet. An in-depth study of his Sanskrit works could have been rewarding at any point of time. This is what is sought to be attempted here.
Samayasundara imparted new dimensions to the sataka genre of literature. What was intended to enrobe the erotic or gnomic poetry, has been turned by him into an effective medium of sastric lore. His Bhavasataka, known through its solitary codex deposited with the L.D. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad, thus seeks to detail the various divisions and subdivisions of the Dhvani form of poetry which rests on the preponderance of the suggested sense as ably propounded by Mammata in his magnum opus." What the author of the Kavyaprakasa had presented in detail, stretching it beyond imaginable bounds, Samayasundara has reduced to a tiny volume, obviously to facilitate a clearer and quicker understanding of the concept. The Bhavasataka bespeaks the zeal of the young author to delve deep into the intricacies of
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Shri Vijyanand Suri Swargarohan Shatabdi Granth