Jambu Jyoti

SR No.: 006503
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: M A Dhaky, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Smarak Nidhi Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 2004
Total Pages: 448
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Religion
File Size: 21 MB

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Arya Bhadrabāhu
resting in a swing. The child made him a gesture to leave, which he took as an omenic sign and predicted the onset soon of a 12 years' famine, whereupon the Sangha proceeded to Dakṣinapatha while he himself retired to (some unspecified place within) the Bhadrapradadeśa where he passed away in peace. Before that, Candragupta joined the Order of Mendicants and was called 'Candragupti muni'. The narrative's details up to the prediction part essentially are the same as in the Ārādhana-ṭīkā; but Hariṣena does not send Bhadrabahu to Śravanabelagola, a point on which he, in fact, sharply differs from, or rather contradicts, Bhräjisņu. Also, the king's name he specifies is just 'Candragupta,' not 'SampratiCandragupta;' what is more, the Maurya emperor Candragupta had ruled from Pățaliputra, not from Ujjayanī, though that viṣaya apparently was included in his empire (and a century or so afterwards, his fifth descendant Samprati will govern it). And Harisena does not mention the 16 dreams dreamt by Candragupta that confirmed the visitation of 12 years' famine and, further more, the other undesirable consequences that will follow therefrom. Lastly, he does not state what happened to Candragupti muni, whether he accompanied Bhadrabāhu, or remained in Ujjayanî, or went along with the Congregation to the Southern country.
Among the Northern narrative sources on Bhadrabahu, usually, why totally neglected by the scholars using Southern sources, four happen to be more important. The earliest is the Tīrthāvakālika prakīrṇaka (c. A.D. 550). Its author first lays down the details of Bhadrabahu's hagiology, which, of course, follows that of the Paryuṣaṇākalpa-Sthavirāvalī as well as of the Nandisutra. Next, in its exposition, it brings in Bhadrabahu in connection with a single, and an important, episode described through 63 verses in Prakrit. As the work goes on to say, after the end of the prolonged drought (its duration unspecified) in Madhyadeśa (eastern U.P.), the (Bhiksu-) sangha assembled in Pataliputra (in Magadha) to reconstitute the agamas since many learned pontiffs had lost the memory of several texts due to their abandoning regular recitational practice-some knowledgeable friars even may have passed away-during those trying years. The munis, who participated in the proceedings of the Synod, are reported to have reconstituted the 11 anga-texts but, as the work reports, none of them remembered the 12th one, the Dṛṣṭivada, in which were included the Purvatexts-in all probability the works of the Church of Arhat Pārsva—which
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