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Arbat Parsva and Dharanendra Nexus: An Introductory Estimation
inferred that the myth was already known to the Svetambaras at this date though nowhere expositioned in their known literature. The earliest Śvetämbara work clearly to refer to the upasarga-tormentation of Pärśva, indeed graphically, is the Caüpannamahāpurisa-cariya of Śīlācārya of Nivṛti kula, the work datable to A.D. 869.38 Kamatha in his incarnation as a demon, is, in this work, called 'Meghamālī' as has been found in some subsequent Svetambara works dwelling on this theme.
Dharanendra, of course, is known to the agamas as well as in the oldest agamic commentaries. His earliest reference figures among the comparisons instituted for Jina Mahāvīra in the "Mahavira-stava" (c. 2nd cent. B.C.) inside the Sutrakṛtānga 1.39 He is next mentioned in several agamas seemingly composed between the 1st-2nd and the 3rd-4th century A.D. in their available versions.40 In some of these works he is specified as the Lord of the Nāgakumāra class of gods. Dharana, obviously, is the Nirgrantha adoption of the Brahmanical 'Seṣa' who supports the globe of the earth on his polycephalous head.41
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As far as Meghamālī is concerned, he seems to be the Nirgrantha adoption of the Vedic Parjanya or rain-god identified with Indra, particularly in the purāṇic period. The Svetambara version of narration apparently had borrowed a single element from the Kṛṣṇa-Govardhanadhara episode in which Indra inflicted the rain-upasarga on Kṛṣṇa and the inhabitants of the village Gokula.42 No Nagendra is involved there: but, for the Nirgranthas, they had to explain the presence of the nagachatra on Pārsva; hence the hill-motif was replaced by the Nagendra motif and, as a result, the other concerned details differed. Since the shower of rain cannot comfortably be suggested in sculpture, the Svetambara standing images of Parsva (which in any case are not many) do not show the upasarga event. The presence of nagachatra by itself signified here, as it were, the upasarga moments just as it also served to identify Pārśva and distinguish him from other Jinas. (Such images occur in very large number both in north and south India in the acela-Kṣapanaka and Digambara sects, a monumental example of it from Halebid is illustrated here on Plate 2.)
The southern Nirgrantha (Digambara) version is first hinted in the Trilokaprajñapti (c. A.D. 550 with several tenth century additions) and its fuller poetically treated account is first encountered in the Pārśvābhyudaya-kavya of Jinasena of the Pañcastupanvaya order, the work composed in the time of the Rāṣṭrakūta emperor Amoghavarṣa in C. A.D. 820-830 or so.43 Next it figures in Jinasena's disciple Gunabhadra's Uttarapurāna (c. A.D. 850). What is involved, besides the incessant rains, in this southern version, is the throwing of a rock or boulder at Parsva by Sambara, the vyantaradeva who was Kamatha in his previous existence. (While
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