Arya Bhadrabahu

Author(s): M A Dhaky
Publisher: Z_Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_1_002105.pdf and Nirgranth_Aetihasik_Lekh_Samucchay_Part_2

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Arya Bhadrabahu
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resting in a swing. The child made him a gesture to leave, which he took as an omenic sign and predicted the onset soon of a 12 years' famine, whereupon the Sangha proceeded to Dakṣiṇāpatha while he himself retired to (some unspecified place within the Bhadrapradadeśa where he passed away in peace. Before that, Candragupta joined the Order of Mendicants and was called 'Candragupti muni'. The narrative's details up to the prediction part essentially are the same as in the Arādhana-tīkā; but Harisena does not send Bhadrābahu to Sravanabelagola, a point on which he, in fact, sharply differs from, or rather contradicts, Bhrājisnu. Also, the king's name he specifies is just 'Candragupta,' not 'SampratiCandragupta;' what is more, the Maurya emperor Candragupta had ruled from Pātaliputra, not from Ujjayanī, though that visaya apparently was included in his empire (and a century or so afterwards, his fifth descendant Samprati will govern it). And Harisena does not mention the 16 dreams dreamt by Candragupta that confirmed the visitation of 12 years' famine and, further more, the other undesirable consequences that will follow therefrom. Lastly, he does not state what happened to Candragupti muni, whether he accompanied Bhadrabāhu, or remained in Ujjayani, or went along with the Congregation to the Southern country.
Among the Northern narrative sources on Bhadrabāhu, usually, why totally neglected by the scholars using Southern sources, four happen to be more important. The earliest is the Tirthāvakālika prakırnaka (c. A.D. 550). Its author first lays down the details of Bhadrabāhu's hagiology, which, of course, follows that of the Paryusanākalpa-Sthavirāvalī as well as of the Nandisutra. Next, in its exposition, it brings in Bhadrabāhu in connection with a single, and an important, episode described through 63 verses in Prakrit. As the work goes on to say, after the end of the prolonged drought (its duration unspecified) in Madhyadeśa (eastern U.P.), the (Bhiksu-) sangha assembled in Pātaliputra (in Magadha) to reconstitute the agamas since many learned pontiffs had lost the memory of several texts due to their abandoning regular recitational practice-some knowledgeable friars even may have passed away-during those trying years. The munis, who participated in the proceedings of the Synod, are reported to have reconstituted the 11 anga-texts but, as the work reports, none of them remembered the 12th one, the Destivāda, in which were included the Purvatexts—in all probability the works of the Church of Arhat Pārsva-which