Sanskrit Manuscripts : Antakr̥ddaśāvivaraṇa

Abhayadeva

Sanskrit Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript contains Abhayadeva's Sanskrit commentary on the eighth <i>Aṅga</i> of the Śvetāmbara canon, a narrative text in Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit, telling stories of various characters who “put an end” (<i>anta-kr̥t</i>) to rebirths. Many of them belong to the time of the twenty-second Jina, Ariṣṭanemi, and some of them relate to the Kr̥ṣṇa cycle. This manuscript is especially valuable because it belongs to a set of the 45 Śvetāmbara <i>āgama</i>s commissioned by the members of the same family. The set is now scattered among different libraries. Some items have been traced in Berlin and in India (see Balbir 2006, pp. 325-52). The colophon is identical in all items traced. It always indicates the place of the copied manuscript within the group by a phrase of the type “manuscripts of the 45 Āgamas have been made to copy. Among them this is the 10th Aṅga/Upāṅga, etc.” The name of the donor is given as Jayakaraṇa, a resident of Khambhat. He and his family members systematically collected manuscripts of the Śvetāmbara canonical texts (See Balbir 2006 and Balbir 2013). The Cambridge University Library has two items belonging to this collection: this one and <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='/view/MS-ADD-02286/1'>Add.2286</a>, the <i>Jñātādharmakathā</i>, the sixth Aṅga of the Śvetāmbara canon (see also Balbir 2013). The scribes of the two manuscripts are different, but the designs in the opening and closing illustrated pages are similar. </p>