Jain Siddhant Bhaskar

SR No.: 010062
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hiralal Jain, Others
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1940
Total Pages: 143
Language: Hindi
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 7 MB

Page 127

No. IV ]
NEW STUDIES IN SOUTH INDIAN JAINISM.
151
We learn from this, how the hill was known in those old times as 'Katavapra' and how it came to be a memorial hill enshrining the remains of the last of the sritakevalis, Bhadrabāhu, of the Jaina sampradaya. From its also having been the shrine of the remains of Emperor Chandra Gupta, this single disciple of Bhadrabahu, known in this present epigraph as, Prabhachandra, it came to be visited by King Bhaska Maurya, his grandson, who built chaityalayas over it and a white lake in the village at the bottom from which the whole region afterwards came to be known as Belgo!a. Though the most ancient name of this place appears in this earliest inscription as 'Katavapra' there seems to have been another name "Belgugula' by which it became more famous even from the tenth century A. D. From No. 29, we learn that this name 'Katavapra' survived to the year 1163 A.-C. although found only in one inscription subsequent to the King Bhaskata's inscription about Bhadrabahu and his disciple Chandra Gupta Maurya. There are several associated inscriptions in very archaic Canarese characters (Puryada Hale Kannada) from No. 35 of which it appears to have been known in a partially modified form as “Kalbappira." In later modifictions like Kalvappa (No 34) Kalbapp-(35) Kabbappu-(No. 41) Kabbāhu (1370), it seems to have been still further modified and simplified according to the phonetic law of 'assimilation,' of course, acting unconsciously in the speech of uncultured people?. Students of linguistics familiar with S. I. Epigraphy may discuss whether in the process of these obvious transformations of a word like 'Katavapra,' we meet with the phenomenon of a phonetic 'curruption' or simplification or 'prakritisation' of a 'sanskrit' word or whether a simple original word like 'Kalbappu' from the Canarese language was transformed by Pandits into Sanskrit. Katavapra. Both processes are possible and do occur in S. I. Inscriptions and literatures. The very words 'Kannada' and Karnāta' transformed out of shape by foreigners into 'Canarese' are an instance in point. Be that as it may, the name 'Belugola,' however, seems to have become popular, and accepted into epigraphs by about 982 A.C., although Lewis Rice
1. The references to numbers are to numbers given to inscriptions in the volume " Sravana Belgola Inscriptions " by Lewis Rice. (Bangalore 1889.)