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MUDIBIDRI
a!l the powe: and all the bliss of the Kevalins is yours. It is yours now and for ever ; for the gorgeous sun of Nirvana knows a rising and it has risen, but it knows no setting and will never set.
The Padarthas are nine: the seven Tattvas. and Punya (merit) and Pupa (sinfulness). The last two are intimately connected with karmas, being sometimes the kind of the actions that create karmas, and to others the way in which the karmas bear fruit.
The third jewel, Samyak Charitra, is right conduct, both for house-holders and ascetics. The rules for lay men are designed to prepare them for following the harder discipline of Yatis or Monks in course of time. The eleven stages of a house-holder's life gradually make him fit to follow strictly the rules of a Yati's life which inculcate thorough independence of worldly concerns and active and unceasing effort towards absorption in the meditation of the self, till the door of Nirvana is opened to him and he becomes, at the end of his hard path', the revered possessor of all-knowledge, all-power and all-happiness.
MUDIBIDRI-AN ANCIENT JAIN CITY OF TULUVA.
BY B. A. Saletore, B.A., L.T., M.R.A.S.
I. As the Motor-bus winds its way up a curved road that runs
North-East from Mangalore, with a steep yawning valley on one side and a high hill on the other the traveller is taken through a tract of land that sometimes appears picturesque and sometimes desolate, till he reaches a village that was once upon a time a famous town. It is the village of Mudibidri, a great centre of Jaina influence 22 milea away from Mangalore. It has been called by three other names—" Venvapura" or " Vamsapura '' ("the City of Reeds "), "Vratapura" ("the City of Services,")
and "Kshemavenu" ("the Peaceful City of Reeds"). To the Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com