The L. D. Institute of Indology has great pleasure in publishing A study of the Tattvarthasutra with Bhasya with special reference to the Authorship and Date by Dr. Suzuko Ohira. The work embodies results of her deep and strenuous research which she carried out successfully for her Doctorate.
Tattvarthadhigamasutra is accepted as an authoritative text in the Svetambara as well as Digambara tradition. And both the traditions agree that its author is Vacaka Umasvati(mi). But the Svetambaras maintain that he belonged to their tradition while the Digambaras maintain that he belonged to theirs. Again, the Svetambaras contend that he himself is the author of the Bhasya while the Digambaras strongly uphold that the Bhasya is not his work. Moreover, Svetambara and Digambara scholars assign him to different periods of time. Hence the problem of the authorship and date of Tattvarthasutra with Bhasya needed serious study and research which Dr. Suzuko Ohira undertook and accomplished very successfully. To arrive at almost correct conclusions she has explored, analysed and studied all the necessary sources, viz. the prasasti of the Bhasya, inscriptions, pattavalis, commentaries of Svetambara canonical texts, Digambara texts, especially the Sarvarthasiddhi, and the works of modern scholars. She has traced the development of certain concepts in order to assign the Tarrvarthasutra with Bhisya to a particular period of time. The historical evaluation of the Tattvarthasutra deserves special attention of scholars. In this counection she has competently dealt with the topics of the Migration of Jaina Communities and the Great Schism in the Gupta Age. Dr. Ohira rightly deserves our congratulations for the present study. We extend our heart-felt thanks to her for allowing us to publish her research work in our L. D. Series.
I am sure this publication will prove useful to all those interested in Jaina Studies.
The Tattvarthadhigamasutra (abbreviated hereafter as T. S) of Umasvati holds a unique position in the literary history of the Jainas. Since when it gained an authoritative position in the two traditions, it has occupied the heart of the Jainas, lay or clerical, as the Bible of their religion and as the essential work of their doctrinal axioms. The T. S. is a compendium of the theoretical contents of the canon expressed in terms of seven tattvas, having moksamarga as its guiding theme. This prakaraga in some 350 sutras (the Svetambara Version counts 344 and the Digambara Version 357) along with its Bhasya was composed by Umasvati sometime in the late middle of the 5th century A. D. at Pataliputra, imbibing the current philosophical problems of the non-Jaina systems of thought. The Gupta period to which the author belonged was one of the darkest ages for the Jaimas, wherein the then socio-economic impact forced them 10 migrate from the North to the West and the South, which caused, together with the fatally accidental calamity of a long famine and the consequent call of the Canonical Convention at Valabhi, the division of the Jaina church into the present day Svetambara and Digambara. The T. S. that was carried down by the emigrants to the South met a necessary revision thereby, and established itself as a pro-canonical text of the Digambaras. The present problem of the authorship of the T. S. which is claimed by the two camps has thus cropped up.
The assignment of this thesis is to testify whether or not the T. S. accompanied by its Svopojnabhasya was composed by Umasvati. This issue is somewhat odd in a way, because a mention that Umasvati or Umasvami is the author of the T. S. which is unanimously accepted by the two sects is found in the prasasti of the Bhasya alone in the earlier literature of both traditions. However, the Digambara Version lacks the entire Bhasya portions, and the abundant epigraphical evidences in the South record that Umasvami alias Grddhapiccha is a Digambara author of the T. S. On the other hand, none of the autobiographical document in the prasasti has been yet proved of its historicity, and no early inscriptional evidence remains in the North and the West to prove that Umasvati belonged to the canonical tradition in the North. The problam thus remains to be investigated. The present-day academic circle is divided into three groups as to which party Umasvati belonged to, i. e., the Agamic tradition which the Svetambaras uphold whole-heartedly, the Digambara tradition which came to compile its own pro-canonical texts, and the Yapaniya tradition which was later absorbed into the Digambara fold and is no more existent. As the codices in the Western stock reveal, the lay Jainas did least bother about nor even distinguished which version of the text belonged to which tradition. This problem was raised and became controversial among the academic circles in this present century when the T. S. study came to attract the scholars' serious attention.
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