Jainism in North India

SR No.: 011067
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Chimanlal J Shah
Publisher: Longmans Green and Compny London
Publication Year: 1932
Total Pages: 66
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 3 MB

Page 208

TV JAINISM IN KALINGA-DESA cavern, very little improved or enlarged by art. It is on the southern face of the Udayagiri Hills, which is the northern part of that low range of hills called Khandagiri, situated at a distance of about three miles from Bhubanesvara, in the Puri district of Orissa. Though not important from an artistic and architectural point of view, it is the most important of all the caves in the locality by reason of its containing a long inscription recording the autobiography of a king of Kalinga "on the overhanging brow of the cavern." I The record is incised partly in front and partly on the roof of the cave. It throws considerable light on the history of India in the second century B.C," when the empire of Candragupta and Asoka had crumbled into decay, when the usurper Pushyamitra was ruling over the fragments of the Mauryan empire, and the Andhras of Southern India, having acquired power, had advanced northwards and had perhaps conquered Malva." 2 The inscription begins with an invocation to the Arhats and the Siddhas in the Jaina style. As believed by Fleet, it is not a version of the acts done by Kharavela for the promotion of the Jaina faith, but it is, after all, a secular record, and records all performances of King Kharavela, who belonged to the Jaina faith up to the thirteenth year of his reign or thirty-seventh year of his life. Following the inscription as it is, we find that its language may be described as Apabhramsa Prakrt, with traces of Ardha Magadhi and Jaina Prakytisms, and that it was incised in the thirteenth year of Kharavela's reign. Thus thirteenth year of his reign coincides with the thirty-seventh year of his life, because, after completing his fifteenth year, Kharavela became a Yuvaraja and performed the Vedic coronation called the Maharajya-abhisheka as soon as he completed his twenty-fourth year. The Abhisheka of Kharavela shows that Jainism did not interfere with the national constitutional rites of the orthodox type. Over and above the exact information that this inscription gives us about Kharavela, and about some of the principal events of his political career, it gives us a clue to more or less accurately fix the date of this great emperor. But for this inscription there 1 Ganguly, op. at, 47 J.BORS,, 488 3 HT WEATH THAT HET. etc-Iond, !V, P 897, and xm, p. 222. JRAS, 1910, p 825 JBORS, 1, pp 431, 438 159.