________________
Narrative Literature in Jain Māhārāștri
197
rapid strides.
We now come to the great romance of the famous scholar Haribhadra called Samarāditya-Kathö'. Our scholar, we know, was a very famous writer in the middle ages, and a vast amount of legendary information is current about him. The most famous of these stories is the one describing his meeting with the Jain nun Yākini, who puzzled this proud scholar with a verse giving the scheme of the Salākā-purusas. This caused Haribhadra to become her pupil and take up Jainism. This, it is said, is the significance of the phrase 'Yakini-Mahattarāsūnu,' which Haribhadra uses at the end of his works. Another story relates how two of his cousins and pupils Hamsa and Paramahamsa were killed by the Buddhists, and led him to take the resolution of killing in turn 14000 Buddhists. But at the teacher's remonstration, he repented of his bad intention, and as an expiatory right for the same determined to compose so many works. This, again, it is pointed out, is the significance of his virahānka which he consistently uses at the end of his works. But such stories cannot be taken as sober history. They appear to be later inventions to explain the use of these curious phrases by the writer.
Haribhadra's' date can be fixed with considerable certainty. The fact that Siddharsi the author of the allegorical story Upamitibhava-prapañcakathā, written in a A. D. 906, refers to him as his guru, is not to be explained as meaning his actual teacher, but only showing that Siddharși was influenced by the great scholar to a very great extent and so was regarded by him as his guru. This is certain, because we have an earlier writer Udyotana who wrote in A. D. 779, referring to him and his work in an unmistakable manner. Haribhadra himself refers to the Buddhist logician Dharmakīrti and so must be later than A. D. 650. We may conclude, therefore, that Haribhadra lived in the 8th century A. D.
His Samarādityakatha is a big romance in mixed prose and verse, divided into 9 Bhāvas to which it attached a bhūmikā at the beginning, and gives the lives of two persons inimical to each other, in their 9 births. In each of these series of lives there results a quarrel between the two in which the one with the bad disposition of mind, kills the other. The cause of this enmity is traced to a really tragic situation in which one is insulted and maltreated by the other unknowingly. Three times Gunasena invites Agniśarman for meals, and is not able to take notice of him on account of some worldly hurry and anxiety. This leads the insulted ascetic to make up his mind to take revenge of the king, which act is technically called a nidāna. And the chief