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

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154
THE JAINA ANTIQUARY.
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expression of man And the sublimation of man, this freeing of him from the earthly limitations and trappings to attain to Arhathood or Jinadva or his original 'divinity' by sikaha and diksha has been what was taught and demonstrated from this place, this thirtha, which originally was an uninhabited or uninhabitable secret spot of Kushmandaranya. “Kabbappu-nād" was a name for the region in which this hill was lacated. Hence I wonder whether the Chaityalayas and other objects of votive zeal that came to decorate this village and these hills in later ages had not shifted the emphasis fromthe sadhana and diksha 1.e., the 'guru-kula' life of the original sages there, to objects of art and architecture and virtualism, so common, in the case of all forms of faith in India, Vedic, Jain, Buddhist and even Islamic. Balugola< >Belugula Belu+kula may also mean the 'white-kula' in which 'Kula' means 'family' or 'group' or ' sect.' Compare the expression 'guru-kula' 'agni-kula,' 'Rāja-kula'. 'White means 'famous' or 'pure'. Hence if the place were originally known as the 'Belgula Betta' it must have meant the Hill of the pure or white sagecompany. Or, could it be that, the attendants of King Bhaskara who were 'Swetambaras' had by this way tried to make it peculiarly their own, leaving, behind a memorial of that fact to later ages in the 'White lake' of the village'? Any way, at the basis of this foundation for culture lies a happy commingling of Nothern and Southern cultural and linguistic trends which has characterised the civilisation of the Karnata region of the Indian peninsula to later times The most remarkable point, however, about Sravana Belgola is that down into the last century, it continued to be not only a thirtha or place of pilgrimage, but a thirtha in the original sense, of a place where the soul transcends the body or death' te, a memorial or Sepultural Hill. Several persons, males and females, had come there, all through the centuries, to have their final samadhi in presence of those great departed sages of their own faith. There are several such sepulchural thirthas or Mutts in South India, but I do not know or have not read open to the devotees of their
C
thirtha," Herein also the
of any places like Belgola which are several faiths for this their final
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