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 Bhadrabāhu
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1) Arya Bhadrabāhu doubtless had flourished during the régime of the first Maurya monarch Candragupta who had vanquished the Nanda and inherited his empire early in the last quarter of B.C. the fourth century, the general consensus for the absolute date of that event veers around B.C. 322106
2) Bhadrabāhu belonged to Prācīna-gotra and thus to Bengal as earlier perceived by U.P. Shah; and, R.C. Majumdar (who otherwise had not seen the Southern and South affiliated literary sources) likewise had arrived at the same conclusion-on the basis of the appellations of the sākhās or monastic branches emanated from his senior disciple Godāsa-that Bhadrabāhu was a native of Bengal. The Southern literary sources unequivocally endorse that inference, adding that he was born and (in his earlier years) had lived in a town within Bengal—be it Kaundini or Kotipura-and was initiated in Pundravardhana.
3) According to the second as also the third phase growth of the Sthavirāvali of the Paryusana-kalpa (c. A.D. 100), Bhadrabāhu was the disciple of Arya Yaśobhadra, the fifth pontiff in the hagiological descent from Arhat Vardhamāna. According to the Southern and South-affiliated Jaina literary sources (earliest of which dates from circa the mid 6th century onwards) as well as the Sravanbelagola inscription of c. A.D. 600, however, his preceptor's name was Govardhana who, too, might have been a Bengālī. As an after thought, a reconciliation between these two totally divergent notices, the Southern being four to five centuries younger in date than the Northern, may be suggested by assuming that Govardhana may have been the vidyāguru—not the diksaguru—who probably had taught the 14 Pūrva-texts to Bhadrabāhu. And the Southern sources, for that matter, in the hagiological sequence, connect Bhadrabāhu with Govardhana.
4) Bhadrabāhu, according to the earlier noted Sthavirāvali, had four disciples, namely Godāsa, Agnidatta, Yajñadatta, and Somadatta. They all, as their appelations unambiguously suggest, were brahmins. The Uttaradhyayana-niryukti reports the death of four disciples of Bhadrabāhu (who earlier were initiated in Rājagrha), on Vaibhāragiri near Rājagrha due to śīta parīşaha, suffering by severe chill. In the gloss given by the Uttaradhyana-cūrni, regarding the death of the four disciples in question, they are said to have died at different locales within Rājagrha's environs, of