Prabhācandra’s Status In The History Of Jaina Philosophy

Abstract

In dealing with the history of Jaina philosophical speculation after the age of the Āgamas, K. K. Dixit in his now well-known 1971 work Jaina Ontology (pp. 88–164) conveniently divides the specu­lations into three stages which he calls the “Ages of Logic”. It is Prabhācandra, one of the thinkers of the third stage (apart from Abhayadeva, Vādideva and Yaśovijaya) which concerns the content of this paper, because Dixit makes contrary statements about him. On the one hand, he says that “the range of Prabhācandra’s enquiry was less comprehensive than that of Vidyānanda and his treatment of topics less advanced than that of the latter” (p. 103). And, on the other hand, on p. 156, he says that Prabhācandra “had made it a point to introduce in his commentaries an exhaustive and systematic discussion of the major philosophical issues of his times” (even including aspects not found in his predecessors, e.g. theories of error).