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

Page 154

Arya Bhadrabāhu
143
responsible for the propagation of Nirgrantha-darśana in South, particularly and at first in the Tamil country and some time after in Andhradeśa 114 There may have been more than one group of mendicants that migrated from the northern (essentially eastern) to southern India 115, indeed progressively so in different ancient centuries.
Bhrājisnu, as well as Harisena, talk about the events in north India during the famine as well as what happened after Viśākhācārya returned to north India in post-famine time. They are, of course, not only poorly informed but are overtly sectarian and the South affiliated sources posterior to these two earliest ones only repeat what the above-noted two authors said and the further additions of details they made only betray their very strong sectarian bias with increased hate and venom. (I intend to deal with that part of the storey, of what happened during the draught years and in post-Bhadrabāhu times in north India, as perceived by medieval and postmedieval Digambara writers, in a future paper.) in Karnataka, the Nirgranthas eventually may have moved from western Andhradeśa as well as from north western Tamilnadu and settled there only in the late third and early fourth century of the Common Era as indicated by the earliest charters from the lower Gangavādi and the Kadamba country that predate the known Śravanabe!goļa inscriptions116. The principalities of the Gangas and the Kadambas by then already had been founded. No earlier Jaina vestiges including epigraphs, or literary notices either, between c. B.C. 300 and A.D. 300 so far are known from Karnataka*
*
There, of course, are reported a few grotto inscriptions of c. the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. mentioning the death (by sallekhanā rites) of the (Nirgrantha) mendicants in lower southern Gangavādi.