Drops of Water in the Ocean of Jainism

It was predictable that Dharmasāgara’s abrasively controversialist writings would provoke a forthright response from some of the targets of his opprobrium. We have seen in Chapter 4 how the members of the Kharatara Gaccha took exception to his early sectarian polemics and, after Dharmasāgara’s death in 1596, ¹ Guṇavinaya, a prolific author of that order, produced in 1608 a work with the self-explanatory title, Dharmasāgarīya-utsūtrakhaṇḍana, ‘Smashing Dharmasāgara’s deviant teachings’, which was a response to the Tapā monk’s anti-Kharatara tract of thirty-six verses called the Utsūtrodghāṭanakulaka, ‘Verses exposing deviant teachings’. ² In this work Guṇavinaya, addressing thirty points of contention with the Tapā Gaccha, attempted to turn the tables on Dharmasāgara by presenting all his criticisms of the Kharatara Gaccha as themselves heretical, so confirming the integrity of the customary practice of his own order. ³