ABSTRACT
Dharmasagara’s abrasively controversialist writings would provoke a forthright response from some of the targets of his opprobrium. Much of what transpired in the later stages of Dharmasagara's life and in the aftermath of his death is described by the Tapa monk Darsanavijaya in his Gujarati narrative poem, the Vijayatilakasuri Ras. The samavasaranya is the assembly place magically created by the gods where according to Jain tradition every Jina after attaining omniscience expounds the eternal teachings of Jainism to an audience for the first time. A combination of pragmatic realism and evenhandedness seems to have informed Vijayasenasuri’s overall attitude towards other Jain orders. Throughout its history Jainism has consistently located non-Jain schools of thought within systematic frameworks by means of which alternative intellectual schemata could be classified and so controlled. The mastery of brahmanical learning, which was an essential preliminary to any prominent monk’s career, was cardinal method whereby the logical procedures within Jain tradition itself could become clarified and strengthened.
