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Didactic Works in Prakrit
213
of royal descent. For his life we are chiefly to depend upon the tradition preserved by his commentator Balacandra who comes only two generations after him. He tells us that Asaḍha was the son of king Kaṭukarāja and his queen Analadevi, who were ruling over the town of Bhinamāla, the ancient capital of Gujarat and situated on its borders. He had a brother Jāsaḍha. Asadha had two wives Pṛthvidevi and Jaitalladevi the latter of whom gave birth to two sons the elder Räjada and the younger Jaitrasimha. From his first wife Asadha had a son Arisimha by name. Rajada the eldest of his three sons, died at a very early age and this incident turned the bereaved father into a poet for composing his two didactic poems. Abhayadeva a pupil of Bhadresvarasūri, who in turn was a pupil of Devendra, was able to console the bereaved father of his grief at the death of his eldest son, which was brought about by the advice which his royal disciple put down in the form of his works. There appears nothing improbable in the tradition and taking into consideration the date of his commentator which is A. D. 1221 who preserves it we can accept it as a true account in the main. But the nature of the books is such as to possess nothing distinctive about them and of the abnormal situation in which they were composed. They lack the warmth of emotion which one naturally expects out of such conditions. The fact that Åsadha was the son of Katukaraja and a pupil of Abhayadeva is corroborated by the concluding verses of both of his works.
Our author is given the honorific title of Kaviśobhāśṛngāra and is said to have lit the fame of Kālidāsa by composing his comment on his famous Meghadūta. He lived at the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth as his Vivekamañjarī was written in A. D. 1191.
The Vivekamañjarī consists of about 140 verses in gäthä and sloka metres. It begins with a salutation to the last Jina and purports to b instructions to the souls who do not know the real nature of the life becaus of the absence of the lamp of discrimination and therefore this want is to be filled by the present Vivekamañjarī. The author then gives the scheme of his work which is to include the usual Jain rites like the Causarana, cultivation of the good qualities the censure of wicked deeds and the reflection on misery which he regards the seeds of the purity of the mind (6). This scheme he carries consistently throughout the work. He points out the real Mangala which consists in offering salutation to the five dignitaries of the faith and enumerates the 24 Tirthankaras (11-12). In addition he refers to other Tirthankaras both past and present and requests them to remove his sin. Then follows the praise of the disciples of Mahāvīra like Goyama (22), and other