Haribhadra was a proud brahmin scholar and royal priest at Chittor who vowed that he would become the disciple of anyone who spoke a verse he could not understand. One evening, passing a Jain nunnery, he heard an elderly nun, Yakini Mahattara, reciting a Prakrit verse. He could make nothing of it. True to his vow, he asked to be her student. She sent him to her teacher, and he became a Jain monk — but all his life he signed himself Yakini-putra, “the spiritual son of Yakini”, honouring the woman who had humbled him.
Tradition credits him with 1,444 works. Among those that survive, the Shaddarshana Samuccaya sets out six Indian philosophical systems fairly and side by side, and his Yoga-drishti-samuccaya describes eight stages of spiritual vision while recognising what is true in other schools of yoga — Anekantavada in practice.
