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Jāvada of Mandu*
In the year 1498/99, when Ghias-ud-din Khilji was the ruler of Mālava, his capital Māndapadurga, now known as Mandu (District Dhar) witnessed a glittering festival. It was an Udyāpana! festival, such as is still celebrated by Jainas at the end of certain austerities, under presentation of articles suitable to aid religious knowledge, faith and conduct. This udyāpana was of special importance. For at this occasion, the pious Jaina lady Kumarī? ceremoniously handed over to the Jaina dignitary Vācanācārya Somadhvaja of the Kharatara-gaccha?, a gold lettered, illustrated manuscript of the Kalpasūtra, which she had got prepared under great expenses.
The magnificent manuscript, bearing the date of S. 1555, is still preserved". Besides the Ardha-Māgadhĩ text of the sūtra, it contains an historically informative prasasti of 91 Samskrta stanzas in high-flown kāvya-style ( ‘K.P.' ), composed in that year by Somadhvaja's great-grand-disciple Śivasundara Munif and copied in the same yearo.
In this Kalpa-prasasti, the author not only describes the presentation in detail, but also records ( of course not forgetting his own monastic lineage ) a complete history of the family of the Jaina merchant Jasadhīra of Mandapa, the second of whose four wives the donor Kumari was”. He starts with the seventh ancestor, an influential merchant of Delhi. The family resided at Delhi, till the 4th ancestor, a younger son, emigrated to Mandu, where its junior branch remained settled. To his branch, Jasadhīra belonged.
The family was of the Bahakața-gotra of the Śrīmālī-clan
* Published in the Journal of Madhya Pradesh Itihasa Parishad,
Bhopal, No. 4, 1962.
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