Ancient Jaina Hymns

Author(s): Charlotte Krause
Publisher: SCIndia Oriental Institute Ujain

Page 82

ANCIENT JAINA HYMNS now the most frequently used pūjā text of the Svetāmbara community.
In any case, it is certain that Nayavimala-Jõāna.. vimala was an admirer of Yasovijayaji. It would thus have been natural for him to show his reverence for the great philosopher and scholar by opening his hymn with the two syllables which the latter loved so much. And in fact he opened it not only with those two syllables, but with the whole phrase which follows them in one of Yasovijaya's works, the "Pratimā-Sataka", which likewise begins with the words "Aindra-sreņinatā"'.' Not only thus much, but in this very way of expressing his veneration, our poet seems to follow the example of Yasovijaya, who opened his SankhesvaraPārsvanātha-stotra with the words "Ananta-vijñānam apāstadosam" in imitation of Hemacandra's “Anya-yogavyavaccheda-dvātrimsikā" (which begins "Anantavijñānam atita-dosam”), and who, at the end of some of his works, used the word "rahasya", the literary stamp of the erudite neo-logician, Pandita Mathurānātha, who had been his teacher, and whom he greatly admired.?
Like the preceding two hymns, Nayavimala's "Sankhesvara-Pārsvanātha-stavana" addresses itself to the image of a particular place of pilgrimage, here the timehonoured and much worshipped statue of Pārsvanātha at Sarikheśvara, an ancient Jaina place situated 16m. from the B. B. C. I. Ry. Station Harij in the Radhanpur District of Gujarat. Its history and legends have been dealt with in detail recently, in a monograph entitled "Śankhesvara Mahātīrtha" (in Gujarati) by the
(1) So does the (probably Svopajña) Țabi to Yasovijaya's "Dravya Guña Paryaya Răsa" (J. G. K., II, p. 30).
(2) Vide M. B. Jhaveri, "Comparative and Critical study of Mantra
shastra", Ahmedabad, A.D. 1944, Introduction p. 245 f, an
J. G. K. II, P.25.
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