________________
अनुसन्धान-५४ श्रीहेमचन्द्राचार्यविशेषांक भाग-२
It is not likely that either Acārya Hemacandra or Bhattāraka Vādicandra or even Ācārya Prabhācandra, the author of the Prabhāvakacarita, were aware of the chronological sequences of their heroes as compared to datings assigned to the yugas in the Brāhmanical Mahābhārata. 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:
“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 Ācārya Shri Shilānka, ed.
by A.M. Bhojak, Prakrit Text Society, Series No.3,
Ahmedabad, 1961. Jainendra Siddhānta-Kosha, ed. by Jinendra Varni, Varanasi:
Bharatiya Jnanapitha, 1971. Mahābhārata (Critical Edition), ed. by V. S. Sukthankar,
Poona: BORI, 1933-1959. Prabhāvakacarita of Prabhācandrācārya, ed. by Jina Vijaya
Muni, Singhi Jaina Series (No. 13) Calcutta, 1931. Trishashtishalākāpurushacaritra of Hemacandrācārya, trans
lated 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.
