The Works of Vacaka Umasvati

Summary

The Works of Vacaka Umasvati M. A. Dhaky The medieval Svetimbara writes credit Umasviti to have composed some 500 works in Sanskrit!, a figure doubtless seeming highly inflated from the standpoint of practically?. This numerical exaggeration palpably stemmed from two consideration : first, the lofty steem in which the author was held?; second, in actuality, he may have composed a fairly large number of works, understandably though nowhere even remotely close to the phenomenally high figure '500'. Of his works, the Sabhasya-Tattvarthadhigamasiitra, the Prasamarati- prakarna, and the Ksetrasamasa-better known થડ the Jambudvipa-samasa—are for long available and published; the first one through two different versions, the second version is sans bhasya. I am of course aware that the authorship in the first case, as also the author's sectarial affiliation are in dispute. Controversies were vehemently raised and raked on purpose - though થા this distance in time they seem needless, puerile, partisan, and biased - in some quarters to assert their own convictions that were based on one hand on a few minor and surficial textual discrepancies 10 the text followed by the bhdsya and that of the ૭56૮ proper of the Tattvarthadhigama and ૦13 the other hand on the slight divergencies from the Tattvarthadhigama noticeable in the Prasamarati-prakarana®. The results of my detailed investigations, which have been intermittently underway for the past three decades, have convinced me that the author of all these three works in question unambiguously is Umasvati, on very firm grounds of the uniformly and unequivocally present peculiarities — style-image, linguistic habits, the tendencies reflected in the choice of words and the manner of phrasing, also strong predilection toward cataloguing (as well as using) synonyms, and very characteristic, indeed distinctive, manner of the overall composition and modulation, not to say of the discernibly 14 M. A. Dhaky SAMBODHI individualistic tonality and cadence®. From the sectarial standpoint, he was neither Svetambara®, nor Digambara’, nor Botika/acela-Ksapanaka of North India®, nor even a pontiff of the latter's probable off-shoot, the Yapaniya of southern India. As all evidence points out, he seems to have belonged to the non-Svetimbara north Indian main and major stream of the Nirgrantha religion which was organized into several ganas, sakhas, and kulas (recorded in the "Sthaviravalt" of the Paryusana-kalpa, c.A.D. 100-503/516) and in whose monastic discipline a single bowl and a piece of cloth, (katibandhana, katipattaka) besides the rajoharana or hand-broom were permitted as monastic upakaranas