Mahavira and his Teaching

SR No.: 008019
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti
Publication Year: 1977
Total Pages: 509
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Biography, Religion, & Principle
File Size: 12 MB

Page 342

THE ASCENDENCY & ECLIPSE OF BHAGAVĀN MAHĀVĪRA'S CULT 335 believe that even 'Takaḍur-Yattirai' was a poem of Jaina authorship.
92. Umāpati-Sivācārya, a great Śaivite pontiff of about the 13th century, informs us that Sekkālār, the famous minister-poet of the court of the Chola king, Anapāya Kulottunga (Cira A.D. 1150) had been prompted to write his great poem 'Periya-Purāṇam', with a view to divert the mania of his royal master for reading such Jaina epics as 'Jivaka-Chinṭāmaṇi' and others of the same type. This epic was but an adaptation of the story of Jívaka, occurring in the 'Uttara-purana' supplement of the famous 'Mahāpurāṇa' of Jinasena, Almost all the stories of the Tamil Jaina epics, except ‘Šilappadhikkāram', had been drawn from the 63 charitas of the 'Mahāpurāṇa'. This latter poem, though not written in Tamil, seems to have excrcised a profound spell over the Tamil poets of that epoch. The very title, 'Periya-Purāṇam', given to Sekkilār's composition, is itself a literal translation of the Sanskrit word 'Mahā-purāṇa'. (Maha = periya = great).
93.
The contents of the 'Periya-purāṇam' are a series of life-stories of 63 Saivite saints, called 'Nāyaṇārs', who included the four great Samayacāryas (Gnānasambandar, Appar, Sundarar and Māņikkavāśakar) also, on whose behalf Lord Siva interceded and performed sixty-four miracles (leelas). Miracle-stories were not new to India at that late date. But what was new was the alleged 'historicity' of the 63 Nayanārs, their dates ranging from the fifth to the tenth centuries after Christ. The saivite mystic, Sundaramurti (9th century) had already enumerated the names of 62 of them, but Nambi-Aņdār-nambi, and, following him, Sekkilār also, added Sundaramurti's name too to that list and made it up as sixty-three. While the 'leelas' were 64, the Nayanārs were but 63 in number!--What was the magic behind this number 63?
We know that the Jainas has their own collection of biographies of 63 Salākā-Purusas, (Book-mark men), current long before even the birth of Christ. It included the lives of their 24 Tithankaras, nine Vasudevas, nine Prati-Vasudevas, nine Baladevas,
94.
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