History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v1.c6.s63.31

v1.c6.s63.31

Jīmūtavāhana gives very little information about himself. In the colophons of his works he is described as Pāribhadrīya Mahāmahopādhyāya and at the end of the Vyavahāramātṛkā (vide note 742 above) he tells us that he was born of the Pāribhadra family (*kula*).⁷⁵² It is said that this name of the family still survives in the Parihal or Pāri Gai, a section of Rāḍhīya Brāhmaṇas (Ghose's Hindu Law, 3rd edition, pp. xvi-xviii and JASB 1915 p. 320). It is also said that Edumiśra in his Kulakārikā tells us that Jīmūtavāhana was chief judge in the reign of Viṣvak-sena of Bengal and that he was 9th in descent from Nārāyaṇabhaṭṭa, one of the five Brāhmaṇas brought by Ādiśūra. The information supplied by the match-makers of Bengal is, as shown above, not worth reliance, unless corroborated by independent evidence. It is also said that for fourteen generations the Brāhmaṇas of Pārigrāma have been degraded and so Jīmūtavāhana would not have paraded the fact that he was Pāribhadrīya if at the time when he wrote his subcaste had been degraded (Intro. to Kālaviveka p. viii). The fact that Jīmūtavāhana was a native of Rāḍhā is testified by his statement in the Kālaviveka that Agastya (Canopus) rose in Ujjayinī when four days of the month of Bhādrapada remained, but that in Rāḍhā Agastya rose when seven days of the month were yet to run.⁷⁵³