Tulsi Prajna 1993 02

SR No.: 524574
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Parmeshwar Solanki
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
Publication Year: 1993
Total Pages: 166
Language: Hindi
Classification: Magazine, India_Tulsi Prajna, & India
File Size: 7 MB

Page 128

20
Mahāvıra Era
about his identity and duration of his reign. Given the importance attached to Chandragupta, the old tradition might have cared to know and preserve for posteriority how many years passed between Palaka and Chandragupta. So the 155 years for the Vijaya dynasty is a figure that cannot be dismissed lightly.
That does not hold good for the latter part of the account. Balamitra, Bhānumitra and Nabhovāhana were hardly the persons the Jaina tradition should have cared to remember. Gardabhilla was villain the tradition could remember. The story of Kalakachārya links Gardabhilla, Śaka and Vikrama together and makes them worth remembering. But is that a guarantee to the accuracy of the number of the rulers and the figures for their reign too ?
Western scholars seek to lessen the interval between Mahāvīra and Vikrama but it is quite possible that it was longer and the tradition has forgotten it. It is merely a confusion that equates the Vijaya dynasty with the Nandas and calls the following dynasty as Maurya, Reign of the Mauryas and Nandas taken together in the Purāņa amounts to 273 years whereas the reign of the Vijaya dynasty added to the reign of the Mauryas equals 263 (155+108) years only which is ten years less. We know nothing about other rulers of Avanti. It is useless to comment on the conjectures about Gardabhilla and Saka even when penned by Jarl Charpentier as they contain nothing substantial in them.
That leads to the question when and how the Jaina authors came to know about the political history of Avanti. Jainism, like Buddhism, prevailed mostly in the eastern part of India at first. It spread to the west later. So the Jaina tradition is expected to know little about the western part of India so far as the periods before and after the days of Chandragupta are concerned, though it is expected to know about Pradyota and his son Pālaka who were well known political personalities of the age. We are not sure about the influence Jainism had in Avanti during the centuries that preceded and fallowed Christ immediately. Historicity of Vikramādiiya and his era is also a matter of dispute to date, The view has gained currency that the era was formerly known as Krta era, then called Mālava era and finally became associated with Vikramaditya. That demands a lot of explanation and seems to contain simply a half-truth. While the equation of Ksta era with Mālava is established with the epigraphical evidence it still remains to be demonstrated that Vikram era is identical with the same. As stories about Vikrama had become quite popular by the pinth century, they might have aroused the need to specify the interyal between Mahāvira and Vikramaditya. A structure was somehow