Acarya Kundakunda’s Samayasara: Text, Transliteration and Translation

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Acarya Kundakunda was the first and foremost of all the Acaryas who flourished after Bhagavan Mahavira and Gautama Ganadhara. Inscriptions and literature hold him more auspicious than the Jaina canons themselves. Samayasara, one of his monumental works, signified the truth of spirituality. The philosophy interknit in it is of a puritanic type with no room for Tantra and mantra. Acarya Amrtacandra, a great thinker and master of spiritual science of tenth century A.D. tried to beautifully illustrate the metrical aphorisms of ‘Samayasara’. Based on the same is the commentary in English by Prof. A. Chakravarti, a leading Indologist of this century.To introduce both the text and its commentary Prof. Chakravarti had discussed in no less than one hundred pages: Self in European thought, Self in Indian thought, rudiments of Upanisadic thought in the Samhitas, the evolution of the cosmos from the primeval Prakriti, a discussion of dreams and hallucinations: and Self in modern science. Carrying the weight of a post doctoral research, this voluminous Introduction is an appropriate answer to questions like; Is the mechanistic and materialistic philosophy reconcilable with spirituality which is often labelled with intellectual immaturity, primitive superstition and even psychopathy ? Bharatiya Jnanpith is happy to publish this fourth edition of ‘Samayasara’ for the eager seekers of truth and reality. Useful footnotes and linguistic corrections in Prakrit metres have been introduced.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR A. Chakravarti

Prof. Appaswami ChakravartiA Nayanar by caste and a practising Jain by faith, Rai Bahadur Prof. A. Chakravarti, 1880 - 1960, was one of the most prominent indologists. He was a Professor of Philosophy in the Government College Kumbakonam wherefrom he retired as Principal in 1938. A versatile scholar of Sanskrit, Prakrit and Tamil, Prof. Chakravarti was equally well - versed in western philosophy. He is also known for his comparative and analytical approach to philosophic problems in the light of modern researches. It is abundantly evident in a number and translated with voluminous introductions, viz. Pancastikaya - sara of Kundakunda (1920); Nilakesi of Samayadivakara Muni (1936); Tirukkural of Thevar along - with its commentary of Kaviraja Panditar (1949); Tirukkural with English translation and commentary, which was described by M.S.H. Thompson in the J.R.A. Society, London, 1955, as 'an indispensable aid to the study of Tirukkural', the Tamil Bible; Samayasara of Acarya Kundakunda (1950)Apart from a number of essays published in the Cultural Heritage of India, Philosophy of the East and the West, Jaina Gazette, Aryan Path etc., he authored some unparalleled books like the Jaina Literature in Tamil, The Religion of Ahimasa, and so on.