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अनुसन्धान - ५४ श्री हेमचन्द्राचार्यविशेषांक भाग - २
It is not likely that either Acarya Hemacandra or Bhattaraka Vādicandra or even Acārya Prabhācandra, the author of the Prabhavakacarita, were aware of the chronological sequences of their heroes as compared to datings assigned to the yugas in the Brahmanical Mahabharata. This is a preoccupation of modern scholars as noted more than one hundred years ago by the German scholar George Buhler, an officer in the Educational Department of the Bombay Government, who first noted this massive literature and insightfully observed:
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"The motives with which the Caritras and Prabandhas were written, are to edify the congregations, to convince them of the magnificence and the might of the Jaina faith and to supply the monks with the material for their sermons, or, when the subject is purely of worldly interest, to provide the public with pleasant entertainment." (Buhler's: The Life of Hemacandrācārya, Chapter I, p, 3.
Bibliography:
Cauppannamahāpurisacariyam by Acārya Shri Shilānka, ed. by A.M. Bhojak, Prakrit Text Society, Series No.3, Ahmedabad, 1961.
Jainendra Siddhanta-Kosha, ed. by Jinendra Varni, Varanasi: Bharatiya Jnanapitha, 1971.
Mahabharata (Critical Edition), ed. by V. S. Sukthankar, Poona: BORI, 1933-1959.
Prabhavakacarita of Prabhācandrācārya, ed. by Jina Vijaya Muni, Singhi Jaina Series (No. 13) Calcutta, 1931. Trishashtishalakāpurushacaritra of Hemacandrācārya, translated by Helen Johnson, GOS. Vol. 5,*Baroda.
Buhler, George: Professor G. Buhler's The Life of Hemacandrācārya, Translated from the original German by Dr. Manilal Patel, Singhi Jaina Series (No. 11), Calcutta, 1936.
