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________________ SAMARAICCAKAHA (BHAVA-II) OP HARIBHADRASURI : A STUDY 407 In the concluding verses of the work, too, he calls it 'Cariyam' and Mahanubhavacariyam'. This leads us to believe that Haribhadra had before his mind's eye the title Samaraiccacariyam. In the Bhumika, Haribhadra promises his readers that he will narrate divvamanusavatthugayam dhammakaham' after mentioning threefold 'kahavatthum' and 'cattari kahao'. It is not at all unlikely that this circumstance might have been responsible to replace 'cariyam' by kaha in the title. Uddyotana refers to this work as 'Samaramiyankakaha'. The word 'miyanka' raises a difficuly for how can miyanka (mrganka the moon) mean aicca (aditya-the sun) ? Punyavijayaji on the authority of a salutation-passage points out that sasanka meant the sun; and therefore mrganka and aditya are synonyms. This is hardly convincing. Dr. Upadhye's explanation of the title seems "The story of arka or aditya limited, qualified or prefixed (mita) by samara, i.e. the Samaradityakatha.3" The work is rightly and appropriately so called as it narrates elaborately the life of Samaraditya, The Hero of the romance-in his nine successive births. The Source and the Model of the Samaraiccakaha In the introduction (Bhumika) Haribhadra quotes 8 stanzas in which the argument of the main narrative is summarised very briefly. These gathas are ascribed to the ancient teachers, whence it follows that Haribhadra took the main theme from earlier sources. "In the numerous stories, parables and fairytales, inserted, we come across many themes which we find often in Indian narrative literature and some of which belong to universal literature."-Dr. Winternitz. Thus "the parable of the man in the well;" a king forcibly reminded, by some chance sight, of the vanity of existence and making a resolve to renounce the world; the king Yasodhara sees his first white hair and resolved to become a monk ; these and many others are common to Indian narrative literature. "Among the works which probably served Haribhadra as a model, may be mentioned the Tarangavati by Padaliptasuri, the most ancient and famous of Jain romances, The original text has been lost, but a later recasting of it, Tarangalola, has been preserved. The reader of it will be struck by the similarity of ideas in it and Haribhadra's work. But there is this difference that while in Tarangalola karma, remembrance of a previous birth and its consequence etc. serve to motivate the story, in the Samaraiccakaha the story serves to illustrate For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org Jain Education International
| SR No. | 001868 |
| Book Title | Studies in Jain Literature |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | V M Kulkarni |
| Publisher | Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre |
| Publication Year | 2001 |
| Total Pages | 114 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English, Literature, & Story |
| File Size | 14 MB |