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Arbat Parsva and Dharanendra Nexus: An Introductory Estimation
as stated in the southern sources, seems a more accurate description since realistic. 15. Vardhamana, too, in his dependable biographical records, is reported to have renounced the world at the age of 30. Curious coincidence!
16. The genuine or original Sammeda-sikhara (called in the Svetambara Sanskrit works 'Sammetasaila') is not the one identified with the famous Pārsvanatha Hill near Hazārībāg in Bihar but the hill known as Kuluva-pahaḍ near Gaya as attested by the remains of the medieval Jaina antiquities there including a fragmentary inscription mentioning "Sammeda .....". (The source from which I got this information is at the moment not handy for citation.)
17. See Malvaniya, Sthānāṁga-samaväyānga, p. 719. Some of these names could be genuine. 18. Ibid.
19. Puşpaculă has been referred to in a few other agamas as well. See Mehta, Agamic Index, Vol. I, pt. 1, p. 468 for references.
20. Ibid.
21. The Nirgrantha numerical conceptions as reflected in the writings, at least from the beginning of the Christian Era, in fact from the days of Arya Syama onwards, reflect megalomania and pampalomania (unbridled flair for antiquity). The limitlessly inflated computed figures shown in these writings often fall in the realm of superhuman and super-astronomical. 22. The Avasyaka-bhāṣya, 17 (c. mid 6th cent. A.D.) so records: (Mehta 1970, p. 453).
23. These alternative dates are due to two different ways of computing Vardhamana's date of nirvana, which, as firmly believed in the tradition, is 527 B.C.; but 477 B.c. as computed by Jacobi after removing the needlessly interpolated 60 years of Palaka's régime in the former figure and adding a decade more as a correction, seems more realistic.
24. See the chapter "Kesi Gautamiya," in the Uttaradhyayana-sutra (chapter 23): Eds. (Late) Muni Punyavijaya and Pt. A.M. Bhojak, Jaina-Agama Series No. 15, Bombay 1977, pp. 207-27.
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जिने पासे त्ति नामेनं अरहा लोगपूजिते
संबुघप्पा य सव्वन्नू धम्मत्थिकरे जिने ॥ १ ॥
तस्स लोगप्पदीवस्स आसि सीसे महायसे ।
केसी कुमारसमने विजा-चरणपारगे ॥ २ ॥
Stylistically, the date of this versified narrative would lay in the first century A.D.; however, it seems to preserve the old authentic memory of an event of Vardhamäna's time. (It does not strike as a "mock fight"!)
25. Cf. The Vyakhyāprajñapti-sütra, ed. Pt. Bechardas J. Doshi, Jaina-Agama-Series No. 4 (Pt. 1), Bombay 1974, pp. 227, 228; Ibid., p. 447.
26. The Nabbinandanajinoddbåra-prabandba (2. 135, 136), ed. Pt. Bhagvandas Harakhchand, Ahmedabad V.S. 1985 (A.D. 1929), p. 38.
27. For the episode of the Parsvapatya Kālāsyavaiśyaputra's joining the church of Vardhamana and what procedure he then had followed, C the Vyakhyaprajñapti, pt. 1, Bombay 1974, p. 67.24. 28. The Svetambara friars, however, do not use shoes or umbrella; they, however, permit a few other
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things including a variety of wooden containers based perhaps on the Vyavahāra-sūtra.
29. The reference to catujjame-nigganthe in the Parsva's chapter and elsewhere in the context of the statements by a few other Arhats in the Isibhāṣiyāiñ is a clear proof of it. (For the Isibhaṣiyāin text, I have used the text figuring in Painṇayasuttāyim, Bombay 1984, pp. 181-255. For the cātujjāme
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