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GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE
Bhavasena-Traividya belongs to Mūlasamgha & Senagana He is well-known as a triumphant disputant. He bears thetitle Traividya which indicates his proficiency in Vyakaraṇa, Nyaya and Siddhanta. He is to be assigned to the latter half of the thirteenth century A. D. Of his nine or ten works, so far known to us, seven or eight deal with logic-cum-nyaya and two with grammar. It appears that he planned to write an exhaustive treatise, the Viśvatattva-prakāśa-mokṣaśāstra obviously an elaborate exposition of the problems and topics connected with the Mokṣaśāstra which is another name of the Tattvartha-Sutra of: Umāsvāti. The present work styled in this edition as Viśvatattva-Prakāśaḥ is only the first Pariccheda of it. Whether the work was completed by the author or not is not known. This Pariccheda is called aseṣa-paramata-tattvavicara; and it presents a critical and polemic review of the Carvāka system with respect to the nature of Jiva, of the Mimāmsā school with regard to the Sarvajña doctrine, of the Nyaya system with reference to the theory of creation, of the Vedic systems which accept Veda as a self-evident authority,of the Samkhya system in the context of the nature of Puruşa and Prakṛti, and of Buddhism with regard to its Kṣaṇikavāda. It is evident that Bhavasena, well-read as he is in various branches of learning, launches an attack against the various schools, both Vedic and non-Vedic, criticising their views mainly from the Jaina points of view. His exposition is helpful to a critical student of Indian philosophy while studying in what respects Jainism and other systems differ in some of these doctrines. If at all Bhāvasena wrote the subsequent sections of this work, it is quite possible that he might have devoted 11
