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
139
some medieval Svetämbara abbatial (caityavāsi) monk practicing sorcery and plausibly belonged to the late ninth or early tenth century A.D. as the of the hymn suggest.
7) It is likely that the emperor Candragupta, in the last year of his regnal period, may have been admitted by Bhadrabāhu to the Order of Mendicants. The combined information obtained from the Tiloyapannati (c. mid 6th cent.) and several inscriptions from Sravanabelagola dating from circa the mid seventh century onwards, provide such an indication. The 12th century Svetāmbara writer Hemacandra, on the basis of some source before him, records that Candragupta attained Samadhimarana 07, death by the rite of suspension of aliment which, too, would hint towards a possibility that he had embraced Nirgranthism. There is thus some degree of probability on this score even when the concerned sources are not sufficiently ancient. Some hazy but a genuine memory of the past event seems to have been preserved in that tradition 108. Bhadrabāhu doubtless was contemporary of Candragupta but not of Samprati who, in point of fact, was the son of Candragupta's great grand son Kunāla*. Both Bhrājisnu, the author of the Karnata-tīkā on the Arādhana and Hemacandra, the author of the Parisistaparva, are confused on this point. Samprati's association with Vijayanī as his capital (by virtue of his becoming the ruler of the westem half of Asoka's empire) does seem a historical reality or at least a plausibility.
8) As for Bhadrabāhu's visit to Śravanabelagola alongwith his mendicant disciple Candragupta and the passing away of both of them there, it is not so recorded in the earliest inscription from Sravanabelgola (c. A.D. 600). The inscription does mention Bhadrabāhu in connection with the prediction he made in Ujjayani of the 12 years' drought, but does not mention Bhadrabāhu and Candragupta or bring them to Śravanabelagola, although this eventuality of historic importance and of considerable significance could hardly have been missed by the author of the draft of the inscription. Instead, it mentions Prabhācandra to have died there 109 And no direct or indirect allusion to the effect of Bhadrabāhu's and Candragupta's association with Sravanabelagola is available in Northern Indian Jaina sources. Somewhere in Karnataka, this belief was taking shape apparently in the late sixth century and was firmly established by mid seventh
* The dynastic order is Candragupta, Bindusára, Asoka, Kunāla, and Samprati.